Chasing Henry
by starsthatburn
Summary: SQ. Tired of the tricks and lies of both of his mothers, Henry follows the dwarves, Red and Granny when they use Tiny's magic beans to return themselves to their old land. Emma and Regina both chase after him, and they reluctantly travel together through the Enchanted Forest in order to find him and bring him back home safely.
1. Chapter 1

***Two quick notes: ****1) I started writing this fic around the time that the PROMO for episode 2.14 (Manhattan) came out, therefore any events that happened in the show after this episode aired will not necessarily be referred to!**

**And 2) I've rated it as M because even though it's currently quite tame, the shouting and screaming and sexy times are upcoming. Promise! Having said that, the relationship between Emma and Regina is going to build sloooooowly. Don't expect any down and dirty smut for a few chapters!***

* * *

Henry remained completely motionless as he stood before the portal, his narrowed eyes watching the last booted foot of the seven dwarves disappearing into the purple haze. His coat and scarf were wrapped tightly around him, only the very edges of the fabric flapping in the sharp gusts of air that were blasting out from the centre of the endless tunnel of colour. In his arms he clutched the book. Wrapped around its leather spine were his thin, pale fingers; so tightly that his knuckles had turned ugly and grey against the dark cover. His stance was wide, his frame rigid. Two dark eyes remained fixed on the centre of the vortex, hardly blinking, as he urged himself to take those final few steps forward.

'Henry!' a voice suddenly shouted from behind him, accompanied by two sets of footsteps and gasps for air that were choked under with tears. 'Henry, stop!'

The boy didn't turn around.

Emma and Regina shuddered to a halt several feet back from him, both of them too terrified to touch him in case he threw himself forwards into the portal. Too terrified to go near it themselves, in case it pulled them both into the very last world that they wished to go to.

'Henry?' Regina's voice was soft, and it cracked under the weight of his name. Emma watched as she reached out a hand for him, her usual confidence stripped from her as she pawed at the air behind her son's turned back. 'Henry. Please. I'm so sorry. I can't... please, Henry, I mean it. Step away from there before it pulls you in.'

'You don't want to go in there, kid,' Emma slowly added, fingers tugging at the worn sleeves of her leather jacket. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Regina nodding.

'How do _you _know what I want to do?' Henry suddenly asked, turning around with his narrow eyes glaring at the pair of them. 'You don't know _anything _about me. Either of you!'

'Henry, of course we do—' Regina tried to speak calmly, but the deep peals of her voice thrummed with nerves that Emma had never heard from her before.

'No you don't,' Henry interrupted. 'You never have. You always tell me what to do, tell me that I'm wrong, tell me that I'm being crazy. You _never listen_.'

'Henry, please don't think like that. I'm your mother. I—'

'No, you're not,' he immediately spat out at her. Regina's hand retracted from the air between them, finding a place at the empty space below her throat. She couldn't ignore the icy pang that followed those words, even now. Even after she'd heard them so many times before.

Emma tilted her head to one side. 'Henry. Come on. She's right: she is—'

'And neither are _you_.'

Silence followed his words. Neither woman looked at one another.

Behind Henry the portal was gradually shrinking. Once wider than his arms could span, it was now little more than a tunnel in the ground.

'You're both liars,' he shook his head at the two women before him. Turning his gaze on Regina, he said, 'You told me you were going to be better. You _promised_. But you were just lying to me, like you always lie to me, just to get me to stay quiet while you get to do whatever you want. You _are_ the Evil Queen. You always have been, and you can't change that.'

As Regina blinked, the anger that she had carried with her for so many years slowly dimming in her glassy eyes, her son turned to Emma. Tears were already running down his flushed cheeks as he spoke.

'And you told me he was dead. You _told _me.' His voice was quiet, but the hurt that clung onto those words screamed out at the both of them.

'Henry, please. Just let me explain,' Emma tried to take a step forwards. He immediately raised the book – the one possession he had carried with him, both in his arms and in his battered heart – and hurled it towards the pair of them. It landed with a thud at Regina's feet, the words _Once Upon a Time _invisible and pressed down into the dirt.

'No,' Henry shook his head, taking a step backwards. 'You promised. And you lied.'

Both women screamed as his next step turned into his last. For a moment he was there, solid and throbbing with anger, with eyes so narrow that all he could see of them was a blur of yellow and a slash of black. And then he wasn't. The ground snatched him from them, and he tumbled down into the purple tide that was slowly drawing out.

Regina was the first to reach it, falling to her knees and thrusting an arm deep into the portal. Emma's hands quickly found the back of her coat, pulling her back up.

'_No_,' she snapped, turning her round to face her and shouting the words into her face. 'Regina, you can't go in there. I've been there, remember? I've seen what's left. If you go through there, the second someone from that world catches sight of you, you'll be dead. You can't help Henry as the Evil Queen.'

'And I suppose _you_ can go through?!' Regina pushed Emma off of her, spitting the words out. 'He's my _son_, Miss Swan – I'll be damned if I let him go into that godforsaken place alone.'

'Regina, please,' Emma's words were more frantic this time, even as the portal reached the size of a rabbit hole. 'It's not safe for you.'

There was a pause, filled only by the roaring of the purple tide going out. 'It's not safe for anyone, Emma,' Regina said slowly. She bent down and picked up the book. 'I don't care if it kills me – I'm getting our son back.'

The words ripped the breath out of Emma's chest.

'…_our_ son?'

'I don't have time to argue with you over my choice of semantics, Miss Swan – either come with me, or go back to fighting with the charming man that you deemed to be respectable enough to father your bastard child. The choice is yours.'

Without another word, she stepped forwards and disappeared feet-first into the almost-diminished portal. Emma blinked, watching the light slowly fading. Watching the barrier between her and her son beginning to close.

'To hell with this,' she muttered to herself, closing her eyes. She took a step into the darkness and held her breath as she felt the cold waves wash over her.

* * *

Half a mile away, at her preferred table in Granny's, Snow sat perched on the edge of a chair with her eyes fixed on the clock on the wall. Charming sat opposite her, watching her dark brows drawing closer and closer together with every faint tick.

'She'll be here soon,' he said softly, reaching out and taking his wife's hand. 'She's only ten minutes late.'

Snow shook her head.

'No,' she said, stuffing a five dollar bill under her coffee cup. 'Something's wrong. We have to go.'

* * *

In a vast expanse of dark, grasping trees near the edge of the Enchanted Forest, Regina stood with her chin thrust sharply into the air. Her son's book was clutched under her left arm, resting in the crook of her elbow.

The moment she had landed in the forest, unfaltering with both of her feet planted firmly on the floor, her dark eyes had started scanning the trees for a sign of her son. She bit her lip as she realised that she couldn't see anything – not a disturbance in the branches, not a footprint in the dirt. Her forehead creased slightly.

A faint roaring sound from behind her grabbed her attention and she spun on the spot, her right hand outstretched as she waited for an animal to jump out at her. She saw nothing. Taking half a step forwards she squinted towards the nearest bushes, clutching the book closer to her side. Through the sparse branches, she could only see open space. And yet still the roaring.

It was then that the portal released Emma Swan into the forest, sending her tumbling into Regina's side with a crash. The book skidded several feet away as Emma's frame knocked Regina to the ground, both of them shrieking with surprise as they thudded to the floor. For a moment there was silence, the roaring noise now gone. Then Regina spat out, 'Will you get off of me?!'

'Sorry,' Emma mumbled, scrabbling to her knees so that she could climb off of the mayor. The moment that she was standing, she reached out a hand. Regina raised an eyebrow in annoyance and pushed herself off of the ground singlehandedly, barging past Emma as she went towards the book. 'The saviour arrives,' she muttered under her breath as she bent down to gather up its now dented cover.

Behind her, Emma was too busy brushing the leaves and mud off of her dark jeans to hear her. Regina turned to face her, clutching the book tightly to her chest as she waited for the blonde woman to register that she was waiting. Emma glanced up, sensing that she was being glared at, and sighed.

'Sorry,' she repeated, picking another leaf off of her shin before finally standing upright. In the dull green of the forest her red jacket was glaringly obvious, and Regina rolled her eyes at her pure ineptitude when it came to absolutely everything.

'So, you decide to come,' she drawled out. 'I'm so pleased.'

'Well, Madame Mayor, like you said,' Emma threw back, 'he is _our _son. Neither one of us has a chance of getting him to come home by ourselves. He's disowned both of us – remember?'

Regina's arched eyebrow quickly fell. 'I remember.' Her voice was immediately softer, and Emma sighed once more.

Suddenly she jumped and began to frantically look about at where they stood, her eyes narrowed. She turned in a full circle on herself, shuffling her feet beneath her, her gaze scouring the nearby landscape as she no doubt searched for a glimpse of the boy that they had chased after.

'If you're looking for Henry,' Regina said flatly, 'he's not here.'

'How can he not be here?' Emma spluttered. 'Have we gone to the wrong world?'

'Portals aren't trains, Miss Swan. You can't just accidentall_y_ get off at the wrong stop.' She sighed and rolled her eyes to the sky. 'But they are rather changeable. If you go through at a different time… you might just find yourself slightly further away.'

'So he's here,' Emma replied, 'but he's not here.'

'Exactly,' Regina smiled tightly. 'So glad you understand.'

Ignoring her tone of voice, or by now possibly immune to it, Emma replied, 'So how do we find him? Is there any way to work out where he would have come through?'

'No,' Regina replied simply, wrapping her arms more tightly around the book and shifting her gaze to something distant on the horizon. 'But he followed Ruby and Granny and those idiot dwarves. No doubt he'll be with them.'

Emma frowned slightly. 'Are you completely sure about that?'

Regina's dark gaze flickered momentarily from whatever had captured her interest back towards the green eyes of the woman before her. 'No,' she repeated. 'But I have to believe that there's still some hope. And they're the only hope he's got.'

Emma could only nod in response. As Regina continued to squint into the distance, she turned away and closed her eyes, muttering to herself a small, sad prayer that her son was okay. That in this strange and unpredictable world he was smart enough to fare better against its dangers than she had been able to.

'I'm so sorry, Henry,' she sighed to herself, putting her hands on her narrow hips and letting her head fall forwards until a curtain of blonde curls shielded her face from view. She wasn't crying, but she desperately wanted to. Part of her wished that Regina would decide to abandon her right then and there so that she could collapse to the floor and cry like a child for the rest of the night. Perhaps then an ogre would appear: perhaps it would hear her cries and, barely stopping to sniff the smoky winter air around its blinded skull, rip her to pieces until the only person Henry had left to hate and resent would be Regina.

'Miss Swan?' Emma's eyes snapped open again. Slowly and painfully, she turned around to face Regina once more. 'Are you alright?'

The pang of concern in her voice was more startling than comforting. Emma straightened her spine and nodded, lips pressed tightly together. 'Fine.'

'Good.' There was a pause. 'Then are you ready to go?'

Emma frowned. 'Go where exactly?'

'Home.'

Emma's mouth fell open in surprise. 'You have got to be _kidding_ me?' The words tumbled from her lips before she thought about what she was saying. 'We've barely been here ten minutes and you're already thinking of ways to go back? Was it all talk, then, you saying that you wanted to save Henry and make him want to come back with us and—'

'Miss Swan, as much as I _enjoy_ what appears to be a split personality disorder on your part, when I said "home" I did not mean Storybrooke. I still fully intend to find Henry.'

'So where are we going?'

Regina smiled her half-smile and gestured towards the far side of the circle of trees. 'If you'd be so good as to come with me? It's not far, where we're going. But night will fall soon, and I can assure you that even the Evil Queen tries to stay out of these woods when that happens.'

Without waiting for a response she began to majestically stride across the clearing, Emma staggering behind her without a word. The two women began to make their way through the trees together, Regina clutching tightly onto the book in her arms with every step of the way.

* * *

'Henry?!' Red's voice rang out between the trees as a trampling of footsteps rushed towards the spot where they'd heard her scream come from only moments before.

'Ruby!' the young boy grinned in delight, wrapping his arms around the tiny waist of the woman stood before him. Soon seven men and an elderly woman arrived on the road where the pair stood, gasping for breath as they witnessed the embrace. 'How did you find me?'

'Wolf thing,' she replied shortly, hugging him close. 'What the hell are you _doing _here?'

'I followed you through,' he said simply.

'By yourself?'

'Yep.'

'And…' she looked around for a moment, seeing only her familiar companions and a vast expanse of deserted trail. 'Where are your moms?'

No reply came from the boy. After a moment Red pulled away from his hug and knelt down before him, frowning as she read his hurt expression. 'Oh Henry. You didn't.'

'They don't need me,' he replied abruptly. 'They don't _want _me. They both lied to me and tricked me and thought I was too stupid to notice. I don't want to see either of them ever again.'

'Henry,' Grumpy said slowly from behind Red's back. 'What Emma did… I'm sure she only said your father was dead to protect you. She must have had a reason.'

'And what about Regina?' he immediately replied. 'What about _her _reasons? She told me she was changing, and then she just…' There was no finishing his sentence. Everyone there knew what the mayor had done in the last few weeks.

'They'll come after you,' Granny sighed. 'You know they will.'

'I don't care. I want to stay here, with you.'

'You don't know that, kiddo – you don't know what this world is like.'

'Then teach me,' he begged. 'I'm the grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming. My mother is the saviour of Storybrooke and I lived with the Evil Queen for ten years: if anyone is meant for this world, it's me. _Please_. Just take me with you.'

Red's hand squeezed his shoulder instinctively. 'Well. We're certainly not just going to leave you out here on your own. But, Henry… they _will _come looking for you. And when they arrive, I'm not going to just send them away again. They're your mothers. They deserve a second chance.'

Henry glared into the darkening clearing, but nodded. 'Fine. _If _they come, I'll listen to them. But if they're too busy fighting with each other back in Storybrooke then it might be too late – so you may as well teach me how to ride a horse while we wait for them to steal another magic bean.'

The group laughed. 'We can teach you how to mine fairy dust.' The suggestion came from Doc.

'And to shoot a bow and arrow,' Granny said.

'And to hunt animals, and to fend for yourself,' Red whispered in his ear. He smiled up at her.

'Come on then,' Grumpy gestured to the woods at his left side. 'That's the quickest path through. We should be there by nightfall.'

'Where are we going?' Henry asked.

Happy laughed. 'Well. To our cottage, of course.'

* * *

'So tell me,' Emma said in her slow drawl, stepping over a log with her arms outstretched in case she fell for the fifth time on that short journey. 'Where are we actually going?'

'I've already told you,' Regina replied flatly. 'You'll see when we get there.'

'It's just that, from what I saw and heard last time I was here,' Emma continued, ignoring the mayor's response entirely as she continued on her current train of thought, 'there isn't exactly a lot going on here anymore. I got the impression that your curse kind of saw to that.'

'Yes, dear,' Regina sighed, pushing another branch out of her face with her free arm. She continually squinted into the dimming distance as she moved, checking on their progress towards this unknown destination. Emma tried to gauge how well they were doing, but to her nothing about this landscape, other than the increasing lack of light, ever seemed to change. 'From what you saw, that would be the case. But as I'm guessing that dear old Snow never brought you quite this far into your journey of self-discovery, you'd have no reason to think otherwise.'

'What do you mean?' Emma sighed, looking around her and still seeing nothing but trees. 'Regina, Jesus, _please_. Do we actually have a destination in mind, or is this just a Hansel and Gretel-style ploy to try and get rid of me? Because I still have my phone with me, and it's got GPS on it.'

Regina paused for a moment to throw Emma a look of utter contempt, but it was swallowed up by the increasing darkness. Eventually she heard another thud from behind her and, with a cold smile, she knew that her companion had fallen over again.

For another ten minutes they walked in complete silence. Emma shivered violently beneath her leather jacket but didn't say a word, choosing instead to clutch the fabric about her thinly covered abdomen and dream about being back at home with a mug of hot chocolate in her hand. With a pang, she suddenly realised she'd left without telling Snow where she was going. She was supposed to meet her at the diner to tell her about Neal and she'd completely forgotten. Groaning to herself, she looked up at the thick canopy of trees above her for the next few paces. When she looked back down again she could not stop the violent scream that erupted from her mouth as she looked into the eyes of the twisted, terrified face of a man frozen to the ground before her.

'Miss Swan?' Regina's voice called from further ahead. She didn't sound annoyed, but she didn't exactly sound concerned either.

'What the hell is this?!' Emma's words panted out of her as she staggered backwards from the man, trying to tear her eyes away from his glassy and cold but otherwise entirely alive ones. She heard a sigh from the queen as she began to retrace her steps back towards her. When she reached the man, she inhaled sharply.

'We're here,' was her response. Emma spluttered in derision.

'We're _where_?'

'Home.'

'Regina, are you on _crack_?' Emma exploded, turning to the woman who was currently up at the sky with a blithe smile on her face. 'Who is this man? What _happened _to him?'

'We're nearly there,' Regina replied, turning around and continuing on her original track at twice her previous speed. Emma took one last look at the frozen man – his mouth was open in shock and his arms stretched out in front of him, like he was trying to protect himself from some kind of blow – before sighing and jogging after Regina. Although she had a sneaking suspicion that the strange man's current state was entirely to do with Regina herself, she stuck closer to her than she had done before.

For the next few minutes similar frozen faces flashed out of the darkness between the trees, each one of them struck into silence just as they were shouting for help. Regina, too fixated on their rapidly approaching destination, didn't look at them as she passed, her feet pounding the hardening ground faster and faster with each step. Emma on the other hand, with her fingers clasped firmly around the gun at her hip, looked each one directly in the eye. She began to apologise to them under her breath. She was sure that Regina must have heard her doing this, but she never turned around. She wasn't interested. They were reaching the very edge of the forest and the place that she called home would appear not too long afterwards.

Emma spotted the castle not long after the tops of the distant snow-covered mountains appeared. Even in the near-blackness that had enveloped the surrounding land, she could make out thin shards of metal that were stretching upwards, clawing at the sky. They twisted around one another like a fire made out of blades, jutting sharply out into the trees and scarring the horizon with their bold strokes. Emma stopped in her tracks as she realised that she'd seen this place before.

'This is your castle?' she asked quietly, her eyes finding the book in Regina's arms as she slowly turned around.

The queen nodded. 'This is home, Miss Swan. How does it suit you?'

For a moment Emma's eyes flickered between the distant, vicious castle and the woman stood before her: pictures of Regina in the book, wrapped head to toe in black and in hate, fitted with this place perfectly. The Evil Queen was made to live in a place like this; her sharp heels ticking against the stone floors as she paced throughout its rooms with a familiar gleam in those dark, dark eyes.

But then her eyes fell back on Regina: her dark hair was messy from trekking through the woods and mud was smeared up the left side of her black trousers. She wore a white shirt, once crisply ironed but now hanging in creases around her narrow waist, with a simple black coat over the top. She didn't stand as tall as he had done in the drawings. When Emma met her gaze, the eyes that looked back at her weren't filled with evil schemes or the venomous hatred that they used to – instead, she saw mild irritation, and exhaustion.

This wasn't the Evil Queen that Snow had spent her life running from.

'It's…' Emma smiled weakly. 'It's got character, hasn't it?'

Regina laughed the only laugh that she knew by breathing sharply out of her nose. 'Indeed it does.' She turned back around to gaze at it for another moment. 'I'm not sure it quite suits me anymore.'

Emma took a step forwards towards her side, half reaching out to touch her arm. Then something caught her eye. She took another step forwards and squinted into the distance, her eyes drawn to an unexpected light in what she assumed was the courtyard of the palace.

'Is that fire?' she asked slowly. Regina stepped up beside her and nodded.

'Yes,' she said. Emma looked round at her. 'They're probably the guards' torches.'

'I don't understand.' She shook her head. 'I thought the curse destroyed this land. How are there still fires, and guards? And _people_?'

Regina smiled slightly and gestured at the land behind her. 'Miss Swan, just because I cast the curse to take us away from here, does not mean that I didn't expect to one day have to come back.'

She turned away once more and lifted her right arm. Slowly waving it in a wide circle, Emma watched as a pulse of light shuddered through the trees around them. Only then did she realise how silent the world had previously been: now, the forest sprung to life with the noises of birds and insects gently speaking to one another, and in the far, far distance she could hear the shouting of the guards coming from Regina's castle.

'You froze them?' Emma asked slowly.

'I froze my part of the land.' Regina raised an eyebrow as she watched the tiny fires in her courtyard beginning to move. 'My mother's not the only person who knows how to protect herself.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

The two women could hear the chaos coming from the courtyard long before they reached its tall wooden gates. Emma glanced at Regina, but didn't relax even when she noticed that she didn't seem particularly concerned.

'When I froze them,' she explained without looking round, 'they would have seen a kind of smoke coming towards them.'

'Like the one that Mr Gold brought to Storybrooke?' Emma asked.

'Similar.' Regina wrinkled her nose as the shouting from the other side of the gate gradually grew louder. 'They don't know that they've missed twenty-eight years. I imagine that they're just confused as to what the smoke was, and where it's gone.'

'Also the weather's probably a bit different,' Emma suggested. Regina ignored her.

'Well then,' she sighed, releasing the book from her grip and slowly offering it to her companion. 'Would you mind holding this for me, Miss Swan?'

Emma nervously took hold of the book, pressing it hard against her chest as she watched Regina turn back towards the gate with her lips set in a tight line. Raising both of her hands to the sides of her head, the air around the queen seemed to grow still for a moment. She then calmly pushed them forwards, and the two enormous wooden doors slowly began to swing back on their hinges, revealing to them both the home that Regina had left behind almost thirty years ago.

The courtyard was swarming with men dressed in heavy armour, almost all of them with helmets covering their faces. They gathered in groups, pointing up to the sky or shrugging their shoulders in confusion. Each voice was louder than the last. After a few moments however they began to notice that the gate was opening and they fell into silence as they watched their queen re-entering her palace, her strides long and confident, a blonde woman confusedly tottering along behind her.

'…your majesty?' One guard stepped forwards to meet her. Even from beneath his helmet Emma could hear his confusion. She let her eyes scan across the woman who was stood before her, taking in her loose hair and 21st-century clothing, and inwardly kicked herself for not suggesting that Regina change into something more era-appropriate before they crossed the threshold of a square filled with men carrying swords and crossbows. Regina, however, seemed quite unperturbed.

'I'm sorry, Michael, do we not bow to our queen anymore?' was her response. She stood boldly upright, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her coat, and even without her usual trailing dresses or threats of magic and violence her men could sense the power radiating from her. They slowly began to bow down.

'Good. Now, what is all the commotion about?' she turned back to Michael, whom Emma could only assume was her captain of the guard. He paused for a moment before gesturing towards the rest of the men that stood behind him.

'Something happened.' He paused. 'There was smoke. A haze. No one knows where it came from or where it went, but suddenly things feel… different.'

Through the slits of his helmet Emma could see his eyes pinning down his queen's choice of outfit, the slight softness in her face, her unusual choice of companion. Regina waited for him to continue, but when the silence only stretched on she chuckled out loud.

'Fog?' she asked. 'You're all working yourselves up into a frenzy and not doing your jobs because of some fog?'

There was a long pause before someone near the back of the crowd spoke up. 'It was purple.'

'You are _my guards_,' the sudden boom of her voice made everyone, including Emma, jump back a step. Regina began to move towards her soldiers, removing her hands from her pockets and swishing her coat behind her with the flourish of a cape. Suddenly every man was stood bolt upright, the glints of their eyes watching her attentively. 'I don't care if it was purple or if it rained down acid onto all of you – you will _do your jobs _and you will protect this castle. Do I make myself clear?'

A murmured response followed her words. 'Yes, your majesty.'

She continued to pace up and down the line of men for a few moments, her eyes focused on each of them individually as she passed by. Eventually she resumed speaking. 'As it is, however: there have been some changes. Some changes that you might have missed.' Another pause. 'The specifics are not important right now. What you do need to know, however, is that certain threats that once plagued our land are no longer an issue. Snow White, for example. You do not need to worry about her any longer.

'Nevertheless, this does not mean that we are safe. There are many other issues that have arisen and require our immediate attention. Tomorrow morning I will speak with Michael and he can relay this back to you. But for now…' she trailed off for a moment, and then slowly began to turn around in order to look at Emma. One of her dark eyebrows was sharply raised. The blonde froze, clutching the book more tightly to her body. The pair simply looked at one another, Emma's heartbeat pounding in her ears as she waited for the command for Snow White's daughter to be locked away, or shot down, or simply kicked out into the forest to die.

'For now, all you must know if that this woman here is my guest, and that we will be dining in an hour. Please inform the house staff while I show her to her room.'

'Yes, your majesty,' came the immediate reply, and suddenly there was movement all around. Regina stood completely still in the centre of the courtyard surveying her soldiers as they went back to work, many of them returning to their guard posts and re-lighting the torches that had been extinguished by the smoke. Inside the castle rooms were already lighting up as servants hurried to prepare for the arrival of their queen and her company. No doubt when the queen had last left, she had told them not to expect her back for some time: and now, after what to them must have been barely half a day, she had returned bearing demands and confusion and inexplicable good news.

'Come, Miss Swan,' Emma snapped out of her reverie as she realised that Regina was turning to look at her once more. 'I expect you'll want to change before dinner.'

Emma followed her into the castle without a word. As she passed by a group of soldiers, she felt their curious gaze following her.

'I still don't understand,' she heard one of them mutter.

'Neither do I,' replied another. 'But at least she didn't crush anyone's throat this time.'

* * *

Emma stood in the doorway to her room for a moment before letting herself walk inside. Part of her had still been expecting to be taken down to the dungeons, Regina pushing her into a cell with a mad cackle and locking it behind her before she went off on her quest to find Henry alone. And yet somehow she instead found herself stood in a vast room made of grey stone, furnished with soft red and gold fabrics and a bed that was larger than her entire prison cell when she had been in juvie. Still clutching the book to her chest, she moved to the centre of the room and turned in a circle as she took in the bizarre, majestic place where she would apparently be living for the foreseeable future. Behind her Regina watched from the doorway, raising her eyebrows at her dumbfounded expression.

'Is it to your liking?' she eventually asked, making Emma jump.

'Yes,' she replied, putting the book down on the bed and shrugging off her dusty jacket. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' Regina's eyes were on the book. 'My chambers are on the other side of the castle. If you need anything, use that bell there to call a servant and they will attend to you.' She paused, struggling to leave without Henry's book in her arms. 'Someone will collect you for dinner in about an hour.'

'Thank you,' Emma repeated, sitting down on the edge of the bed and looking vacantly out of the window. She made no move to get changed. Regina sighed.

'And there's a bathroom through there,' she said quietly, nodding towards the door at the far corner of the room. 'You will find that plumbing is… well, slightly less refined here. Would you like me to call someone to run you a bath?'

Emma looked up and blinked. 'What?'

She hadn't even been listening. Regina rolled her eyes and took a step backwards from the room. 'I'll call a servant.' As she went to leave, she saw that Emma's eyes had fallen back to the book that was sat beside her. 'And you can keep that. For now. You may want to reacquaint yourself with how this land works, Miss Swan. I'll see you in an hour.'

She shut the heavy door behind her with a thud before making her way down the corridor towards her own rooms. Her feet led the way, her heels tapping along the stone without her needing to think about it. It had been twenty-eight years, but they still knew exactly where they were going.

Emma remained perched on the edge of the bed, listening to the footsteps as they disappeared down the hallway. She had imagined that sound would carry loudly down the stone corridors of the queen's castle, and yet Emma could only hear Regina for a few moments before the whole palace seemed to fall silent. She immediately began to worry, wondering if maybe this was a trap after all and if she opened the door to her room she would find that she wasn't in the castle at all, but aimlessly stuck in some other unknown world. Biting her lip she pushed herself up off of the bed, creeping over to the door and pressing her ear against the thick wood in an attempt to hear the servants down in the kitchens preparing dinner, or Regina's commanding tones stretching across from the eastern side of the castle. But she heard nothing. Sucking in a breath between her teeth, she grabbed hold of the large bronze doorknob and heaved the door towards her, peering out into the corridor. She found herself meeting the startled expression of a middle-aged woman with a maid's uniform on, her cracked fist raised as she went to knock on the door before her.

'Jesus,' Emma jumped in shock, knocking her temple against the wooden frame in the process. The servant blinked several times and watched as she frantically rubbed the palm of her hand against the bruised skin. 'Shit. Owh.'

'Miss Swan, I'm so sorry!' the woman before her looked horrified at what her mere presence had done to what was possibly the first guest that the queen had ever had. Emma opened her eyes, previously scrunched up in pain, and frowned when she saw that the servant's own eyes were slowly filling with tears. 'Please, let me take a look at that. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to—'

'It's okay,' Emma quickly interrupted before she started actually sobbing. 'It's, um, just a bump. I'll survive.'

The woman still didn't make a move, either to come into the room or to attempt to regain her composure. Emma stepped back from the door so as to open it fully, her left hand still pressed to the side of her face.

'Can I help you with something?'

'I'm sorry to interrupt, Miss Swan,' the woman replied shakily. 'But the queen said that you required help running a bath.'

'She did?' Emma glanced round at the door to the bathroom in the corner. 'She didn't need to do that. It's a bath – I'm pretty sure I've got it.'

It was then that she noticed the two buckets of steaming water sat on the floor either side of the woman's feet. Emma's face fell. 'Oh.'

'May I come in?' the servant tentatively asked. Emma nodded silently, stepping to the side so that she could get past. The woman then curtseyed, causing Emma to nearly fall back into the doorframe for the second time that evening, before bending down to pick up both of the brimming buckets.

'Let me help you,' Emma quickly said, reaching for the closest one. The maid jumped in surprise and immediately tried to pull it back from her.

'It's alright, Miss Swan, I don't need any help.'

'That's crazy, they're way too full. Here, I've got it.'

The woman's eyes opened wide as Emma prised the bucket from her hand, nearly staggering under the weight of it herself. Silently, the woman led her guest to the bathroom, its walls already lighted with a dozen candles.

The pair of them poured the water into the ceramic tub that stood in the centre of the room in one simultaneous movement before Emma handed the empty bucket back to the maid.

'I'll be right back with the next load, Miss Swan,' she said, curtseying again and quickly shuffling out of the room before Emma could reply.

'It's Emma,' she called after her after a few moments. The woman was gone though, and Emma's voice bounded off of the stone walls unheard.

After four more trips the enormous bathtub was finally full, its steaming contents enveloping the room in a dense fog that smelt faintly of vanilla. The maid put down the final bucket by the foot of the bath, pushing her greying hair out of her eyes as she attempted to catch her breath before swiftly collecting them back up again. Emma watched her from the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. The woman turned around and, seeing the slight frown on her face, nearly dropped both of the buckets in horror.

'I'm so sorry, Miss Swan,' she stammered, taking a step forwards. 'I'll help you get undressed now.'

'Beg your pardon?' Emma said in a low voice, crossing her arms even more firmly as the woman reached out her hands towards her.

'I…' her arms dropped back to her sides. 'You don't require my help?'

'I think I'm probably good,' Emma replied. 'I was just wondering where everything is. You know, soap and towels and stuff.'

'_Oh_,' the woman breathed a sigh of relief, gesturing for Emma to follow her to the back of the foggy room. Pressing her hand firmly against what appeared to be a wooden panel on the stone wall, a cupboard door sprang open. Inside were more bottles and bars than Emma had possibly owned in her entire life.

'Everything you'll need is in here, Miss Swan.'

'It's Emma,' she said for the third time that evening. 'And thanks. How long do I have before dinner?'

'Just over half an hour, Miss Swan,' the woman replied. 'I will bring some clothes up for you while you are in the bath, and then someone shall come and collect you when dinner is being served.'

'Thanks,' Emma repeated. Then, just as the woman turned to leave, she called her back. 'What's your name?'

The woman blinked in surprise. 'My name?'

'Yeah. I assume I'll be seeing you again?'

'Yes, you will,' the woman said slowly, obviously curious, as if this reason wasn't a valid one. Nonetheless, she quietly answered, 'It's Maria, Miss Swan.'

'And it's _Emma_, Maria. Nice to meet you.'

Maria nodded slightly, curtseyed again, and then finally left the room, closing the heavy door behind her. Emma quickly unzipped her jeans, pulling them off and flinging them onto the bed, her white tank top swiftly following it. It was only then, as she stood in the centre of her silent bedroom with only her black underwear and socks on, that she suddenly registered the other thing that Maria had said to her.

'Wait. Bring _what _clothes up for me?'

* * *

It was strange to look into her mirror and see only one face reflected back at her. Regina reached out a hand and pressed it gently against the glass, waiting for Sidney's face to materialise and tell her that he, at least,was pleased to have her back in the castle so soon. But the glass remained cold, and all she could see was her own dark features looking back at her. She frowned, and abruptly turned away. The room before her was exactly as she had remembered it, but she knew now that what she had said to Emma earlier that evening was truer than she had realised: it no longer suited her.

Stepping into the marble bathroom, she waved a hand vaguely over the bathtub and watched as it slowly began to fill up with smoky, fragrant water. A weak smile appeared on her lips. Letting the water level rise, she turned away and began to pull her dusty clothes off. She left them draped across her bed, wondering whether the servant who came to collect them would bother to have them cleaned or whether they'd be promptly burned and never mentioned again. Inwardly, she laughed. Outwardly she released a sigh, turning around just in time to see that the bathtub was overflowing.

'Shit,' she muttered to herself, waving a hand over the pearly water until the invisible flow subsided. Clearly she wasn't quite used to having free reign of magic again – losing control of something as rudimentary as water was not something that she had encountered in recent years. She held her hand back out again, her palm facing downwards, and slowly lowered it until the water level was several inches below the rim of the marble bathtub. It stayed there, and her shaking hand returned to her side. After only a few seconds the door behind her was closed and she was letting her wearied body sink below the translucent tide, closing her eyes as the water lapped over her face. The water crept into her ears and, just for a few moments, this entirely unfamiliar world was blocked out of her head once more.

When she returned to her bedroom the candles had been lit, and her clothes from Storybrooke were gone. Wrapped in a thick robe, made from some material that she could no longer remember the name of, Regina padded over to the full wall that concealed her queen's wardrobe and waved the doors open. Selecting one of the plainer items she owned; a floor-length dress made of velvet that was such a deep purple it could easily pass as black in the dim light of her chambers, she dropped the robe from about her body and began to go about getting dressed.

The empty mirror reminded her that her hair was shorter now. For a moment she considered lengthening it, for the purpose of practicing simple magic more than anything else, but decided against it. She had made a promise once, regarding magic – now was no time to fall back into old habits. Instead she summoned the servant who was stood outside the room and sat back as she neatly arranged her hair and make up for her. The whole while Regina stared blankly at her own face in the mirror, watching as it transformed into the dark shadow of a woman whom she didn't realise still existed quite so concretely. Her eyes seemed to jar against the rest of her face: all of her features were too bold, too violent, each of them aggressive paint strokes on the blank canvas of her skin. Still the servant brushed on more colour for what seemed like an eternity, until her queen wearily raised a hand and gestured for her to leave.

'Dinner will be ready in five minutes, your majesty,' the girl said in a low voice, curtseying before she left the room. Regina was left with her head resting gently on her hand, her dark eyes unblinkingly watching as the weight of her queen's disguise dragged her face into a sad, crushing frown.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The queen sat at the head of the dining table, staring down at the perfectly mirrored rows of empty seats before her. Only one place other than her own had been set: it was directly to her right, and it too was currently unoccupied. Tapping her long nails against the table in frustration, she summoned over the nearest guard.

'What is the delay with dinner?' she demanded. The man, helmet-less but wearing full body armour, stared straight ahead as he answered her.

'The servants are under commands to wait until your guest has arrived before serving, your majesty.'

'Very well. And where is she?'

There was a pause. 'I'm afraid I don't know, your majesty. I can send someone to find out?'

'Well, that seems like a good idea, doesn't it?' she replied, leaning back in her seat and listening to the metallic sound of his retreating footsteps. At least a dozen other guards lined the walls of the enormous room, all of them looking directly ahead in a deliberate attempt to avoid any form of eye contact with their queen. As a result, Regina sat quite alone. The vast table was desolately empty, with only the two place settings and half a dozen candles filling the blank space as she waited for news of Emma Swan's whereabouts.

Eventually the guard returned. 'Miss Swan is on her way, your majesty.'

Regina nodded, still languishing back in the chair with one elbow propped up on the heavy wooden arm rest. 'Thank you, Steven.'

She couldn't pretend that Emma's lateness hadn't annoyed her. After all, she had let her into her home – as a _guest_ no less, not even as a prisoner as she had considered multiple times on their slow, jolting journey there. She had even given her her own lady in waiting to assist her. All of this for the woman who stole her son, stole her boyfriend, stole the last few crumbling nuggets of happiness that still managed to exist in her life. As villainous, magic-wielding queens go, she considered her actions to be staggeringly reasonable. And yet Miss Swan couldn't even manage to arrive at a simple dinner on time.

Almost fifteen minutes after the food was due to have been served, the sound of stomping footsteps could be heard from on the other side of the enormous wooden doors. Regina forced herself to sit upright in her chair, folding her arms across the very edge of the table and looking straight ahead with a blank expression pressed firmly onto her face.

The moment Emma walked through the door, however, she could see the furious vein that was protruding from the queen's forehead, and she knew that she was in trouble.

'I'm sorry,' she said as she approached the table, stumbling in boots that were too big for her. 'There was a problem with… with my wardrobe.'

Only then did Regina slide her heavy gaze across to her blonde guest, and she found herself jumping in bewilderment. 'Miss Swan, what on _earth _are you wearing?'

Emma was kitted out in what she could only assume was men's riding gear: a long-sleeved black shirt that was easily three sizes too big for her, clumsily tucked into brown leather trousers of a similar state. Her black leather riding boots hung lazily around her calves and, all in all, she looked like a small child playing dress up in her parents' clothes.

She looked down at herself without expression. 'My clothes were taken. And I was given a dress to wear.'

Regina raised an eyebrow. 'How positively contemptible.'

Taking her seat in the chair to the right of the queen, Emma shrugged. 'It was a nice dress, Regina. But I don't do dresses. Not in Storybrooke; not here.'

The doors to the kitchen promptly swung open and trays of food and wine began to be carried into the dining hall. Regina ignored them. 'But this,' she said, gesturing towards her guest's current guise, 'is acceptable?'

Emma threw her a reproachful look. 'Look, I know it's not exactly ideal, but it's the only thing that was in my room that wasn't, you know… poofy. Or pink. I know this is a castle, Regina, but that doesn't mean I need to swan about dressed like a meringue.'

Following her words Emma heard the servants around her, who had previously been whispering careful instructions to one another as they placed the dishes onto the table, fall into an odd silence. She blinked, glancing around at them. No one made eye contact – not with her, not with each other, and especially not with Regina.

'And exactly how much experience _do _you have of castles, Miss Swan?' Regina asked coolly, taking the glass of deep red wine that had just been poured for her, but not drinking any.

'Not a lot, obviously,' Emma shrugged, watching as the nearby servant crept around the table to fill up her own glass. 'But I think we can both agree that corsets and flowing skirts aren't exactly my thing either way.'

'I'm not sure I realised that they were anyone's 'thing'.'

'Apparently, they're yours,' Emma replied. 'That dress. It suits you.'

Another silence fell. Emma picked up her full wine glass, quickly turning to thank the servant who was just leaving them. In that movement, Regina caught sight of the left side of her face in the dim candlelight.

'What did you do to your head, Miss Swan?' she asked, taking a sip of wine. Emma's hand immediately shot to the raised cut along her flushed temple.

'Oh. I, um. I hit it on the door frame.' She drank some of her own wine, rejecting her host's preference for delicate sips by instead taking back half the glass in one mouthful. 'It's no big deal.'

'It looks like it hurt,' Regina replied. Emma glanced up at her in surprise, hearing a soft edge to her voice that she had only ever heard her use on one other person before. 'I can heal it for you. If you like.'

'Oh.' Emma's eyes widened over the top of her wine glass. She swallowed painfully and put it back down on the table, her eyebrows knitted together. 'I… I don't think so.'

Regina blinked. 'Why not?'

'Thank you for offering,' Emma said, leaning across the table to pick up the dish of chicken that had been placed in front of her. 'I do appreciate it. But I don't like magic. And… I don't know. I'd just rather we didn't use it.'

Regina's arm, which had moved to put her own wine glass back down on the table, halted in mid-air. 'Is that so?' She didn't attempt to hide the contempt from her voice. Emma continued serving herself food, biting her lip in concentration, seemingly not noticing. After a moment she held out the dish to Regina, who remained completely still until Emma was forced to put it back where she'd got it from.

'Miss Swan,' Regina said after a few more moments of silence. 'Would you care to tell me exactly how you think we are supposed to survive in this land _without _using magic? Because I'm all ears for your educated suggestions.'

'No one else here has it, Regina,' Emma said calmly, loading up her plate with vegetables. 'I'm sure we'll cope just fine.'

'Because, as we've already established, you know _so _much about this land.' Regina's plate with still empty before her and she made no move to fill it up.

'I know enough.' Emma said, sounding less patient now. 'And I know enough about magic. I've seen what it did to you in Storybrooke. Magic is dangerous, Regina.'

'Magic is _necessity_.'

'No it is _not_.' Emma snapped, her eyes narrowing. 'You know as well as I do that that's not true. The reason that we're in this situation, Regina, is because we both lied to Henry. We completely betrayed him. And I don't know about you, but I am planning on doing whatever I can to stay honest from now on – and magic is definitely _not _honest. It's from some reality that doesn't belong to us, that doesn't belong to Maine. When we get Henry back, there will be no more lying. Which means no more magic.'

Regina had fallen into complete silence, clutching her wine glass in her hand with her eyes down on her empty plate. For some reason, words were eluding her – she knew that Emma was being absolutely ridiculous. They were in a dangerous land where every remaining person wanted her dead: magic was their only surviving hope.

And yet, infuriatingly – she also knew that she was right.

'I can't pretend that it sounds entirely plausible, Miss Swan,' she eventually muttered. 'If someone tries to kill us – which, believe me, is likely – I'm willing to bet that you won't be so opposed to me casting a few spells then.'

Emma simply pushed a forkful of potato into her mouth, rolling her eyes.

'But maybe we can come to some kind of agreement,' the queen slumped back in her chair. 'Where perhaps magic can be there as a last resort. For emergencies. Or displays of regal authority.'

Emma choked on whatever she had been eating. 'What? Regina, I—'

'Miss Swan,' she coolly replied. 'It was a joke.'

'Oh.' The sheriff smiled slightly, wiping her mouth. 'Right.'

She continued eating in silence, and Regina finally began to serve herself some food.

A few minutes later, when Regina finally forced herself to look back up again, she just about caught the small smile that was playing on Emma's face. The queen narrowed her eyes, taking in the lips that were tightly pressed together. Emma wasn't simply smiling happily to herself – she was trying not to laugh. She was trying not to laugh at _her_.

'Feel free to share what's so amusing, dear,' Regina said frostily, the sudden sound of her voice echoing around the vast room and causing Emma to jump in her seat. She looked up, blushing.

'What? Nothing.'

'No, do tell.' The queen's voice was flat. She was lounging back in her chair again, both of her eyebrows raised. 'Go ahead.'

Emma blinked at her, trying to judge whether she was actually curious or whether she was simply annoyed. She was willing to bet it was the latter. But, nonetheless, telling her what she was thinking about was probably preferable to elongating the awkward silence even further.

'I was thinking about you and Snow White.'

Regina's stomach sank. 'Oh.'

'More about you though, really.' Emma picked up her wine glass and sat back in her chair, imitating Regina's posture without thinking about it. 'About everything that both she and Henry have told me about you.'

Regina, already regretting asking her to speak up, replied, 'I see.'

'It's just funny, isn't it? Before today I'd only ever seen you – seen the Evil Queen, that is – either in the pictures in Henry's books, or in the terrible things that Mary Margaret has said about you. In my mind I had built up this picture of someone enormous, and dangerous, and terrifying. And yet now I'm sat here with the queen herself, and you're not any of those things. Not really: you're just Regina.'

Regina blinked at her, her lips pursed. 'I see,' she eventually choked out. 'So you're the expert on me now then, are you Miss Swan? You know _all _about the Evil Queen? Just because I let you into my home and allowed you to sleep in a bed rather than on a dank straw mat down in the dungeons, that makes me unworthy of your time or your respect?'

'It wasn't an insult, Regina,' Emma said softly, leaning forwards. 'Honestly. I didn't mean it like that. What I meant was… you seem a bit too small for this place. It's too dark and too cold for the woman that I've seen trying to hold onto Henry every day for the last year. That's all.' As she mentioned their son, the queen visibly deflated, falling back against her chair where she'd previously been rigid with annoyance. Emma saw this, tilting her head to one side and sighing.

'The book paints you as this enormous, petrifying creature, so full of _hatred_, you know? And I've never seen that.' She paused, then laughed. 'I mean, I've seen you full of hatred for _me_ on several occasions, of course. But Henry… he always sort of blurred the edges of that. It was a different kind of hatred. You were never villainous – you were just protective.'

There was a long pause as Regina absorbed these words, her eyes focused sharply on her companion's face as she checked that she wasn't mocking her. When Emma didn't laugh – didn't even blink – she nodded.

'I see,' she said slowly, glancing down at the table once more. 'I see.'

The room was growing darker as the sporadically placed candles began to burn out. Around the walls of the room, the queen could no longer see her soldiers as they stood guard.

She smiled sadly. 'I'm sorry for snapping at you. Again.'

'Don't worry about it,' Emma replied, pouring herself some more wine before moving the jug to the queen's glass. Regina nodded, and she filled it for her.

'And just for the record, Miss Swan,' she burst out. 'I don't _hate _you. You're just a serious irritation.'

A short, sharp laugh erupted from Emma's mouth. 'Well, that's good to know, at least.' Regina's face broke into a small smile, her dark eyes gleaming in what remained of the candlelight. A few moments later the servants reappeared, collecting up the dishes of food and quickly clearing the room.

As the pair continued drinking their wine Regina felt her eyes beginning to soften, the alcohol creating a dull haze around the edges of everything surrounding her. And yet, for some reason, the dark red cut along the side of Emma Swan's face was glaringly obvious to her, and she couldn't stop herself from staring at it. Even in the dim light of the grand room, it stood out glaringly against her pale skin, and the queen could feel herself getting more and more agitated as she looked at it. _How can one woman be so clumsy_, she wondered to herself. _How is it possible_. She repeated this to herself over and over, shaking her head slightly, watching as the blonde woman ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her heavy wine glass, seemingly without noticing her companion's eyes on her. Regina tutted at her incompetence. And yet she still yearned to reach out a shaking hand, holding it carefully over the side of her face, and heal that irritating wound.

As they left the room together Regina walked half a step ahead of Emma, both of the women enveloped in a silence that was bottomless but not uncomfortable. They climbed the enormous central staircase one behind the other, Regina keeping her head held high as she mentally counted each step, her lips pressed together. Behind her she could hear the dull thump of Emma's riding boots hitting the stone floor, the sound of her light breathing growing heavier as she continued on the climb. At the top of the staircase they stood for a moment on the imposing landing, Regina on the east side and Emma towards the west. Regina eventually turned to face her guest, a small smile painted across her parted lips.

'Goodnight then, Miss Swan,' she said evenly. As she spoke her eyes were drawn down to Emma's hands, which were busy pulling at the bottom of her enormous shirt after it had fallen free from the loose waistband of her trousers. Emma's own eyes kept flickering down to the floor, and her smile was awkward. Never had Regina seen her so uncertain of herself before, and she felt a sadness pinch at the inside of her chest.

Drawn in once more by the cut on the side of Emma's face, Regina took a slow step forwards. Emma froze. Regina paused, and then reached out, letting her longest finger trace the curve of the wound without once touching it. Emma's Persian green gaze remained clamped onto the queen's jaw, watching it gently clench and unclench, until eventually her hand drew back once again. As the queen moved away but half an inch, her dark eyes met those of the woman before her. Seeing the tension trembling in her tightly creased forehead, she smiled coolly.

'Like I said,' her calm voice came from deep within her throat. 'If you want me to heal that, I will. All you have to do is ask.'

Emma's mouth opened slightly and then closed, her eyes widening further and her eyebrows shooting upwards in surprise. The woman who stood before her was exactly the same woman with whom she'd been fighting for the last year; the same woman who had stood right in her face in exactly this way so many times before. But tonight their eyes met and no one blinked, no one spoke. Emma watched the queen's eyes run curiously down to her quivering lips, her right eyebrow rising slightly as she watched the blonde's tongue unconsciously flick out to wet them for just a second. Regina tilted her head to one side, forcing herself to look back up again. Emma's forehead remained creased, and confusion overran any other expression that she might have been able to see there.

'Goodnight, Miss Swan,' Regina said, gently nodding her head. 'We shall discuss the plans regarding our son in the morning.'

She was halfway down the hallway, surrounded by the smell of deep red wine and the sweep of velvet skirts, before Emma could reply. She looked down at herself, seeing her right hand making a fist amongst her ridiculous clothing and her left hand clinging tightly onto the iron banister to her side. The breath that she had been holding began to escape from her lungs. Slowly she turned away from the staircase and started to make her way across the western side of the castle, her eyebrows knitted tightly together as she wondered why on earth that rage that had always lived deep inside Regina suddenly did not feel like a threat to her. She did not register that the throbbing pain of her wounded forehead had ceased.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Emma's footsteps through the castle the next morning were significantly lighter than they had been twelve hours earlier. Having woken early, she had called Maria into her room, mumbling under her breath an embarrassed request for another bath. Maria had simply curtseyed in response, seemingly not minding. For the next ten minutes water was slowly transported into the bathroom by her and another servant as Emma stood facing the enormous wardrobe, choosing to avoid the men's section for today and instead focusing her attention on the fuller, but glitzier, portion that was full of dresses. When Maria resurfaced from the steaming bathroom to inform her guest that the bath was prepared, she noticed the young woman's frown and stopped in her tracks.

'Is everything alright, Miss Swan?' she asked carefully. Emma's response was preceded by a loud sigh.

'I don't know what to wear today.' These were words that Emma had never uttered before in her life, and they sounded foreign coming from her lips. Maria, recalling the ridiculous ensemble that she had left the room in yesterday, felt similarly confused at this announcement.

'I don't think you can wear the same thing that you did last night, I'm afraid, Miss Swan.' She said these words slowly and cautiously, waiting for her guest to explode with outrage. But Emma just sighed again.

'I know,' she said sadly. 'But I don't think I can wear a dress either.'

'Perhaps not,' she replied, taking a step towards the wardrobe and running a hand gently along the silky fabrics. 'Some of these aren't too glamorous though. And this one would look absolutely _lovely _on you.'

She was holding out a long gold-coloured dress, its skirt full but falling just short of poofy, with minute jewels stitched around the bodice. It was beautiful. But it was also ridiculous.

'I don't think so,' Emma said slowly, a small but sad smile on her lips. It was odd how it was this – not the ogres or werewolves or evil queens, but the overwhelming choice of wardrobe – that was making her aware of how out of her depth she really was in this world.

'Pity,' Maria said, replacing the dress with a wistful look in her eye. 'It really would suit you.'

'Hmm.' Emma's hands were slipping across the fabrics, pushing each dress aside one by one with a frown still etched on her forehead. 'Where did all of these come from, anyway?'

'I'm not sure,' Maria replied, holding out another dress and examining its slightly frayed needlework. 'Some of them were made by the queen's seamstress: she gets bored between projects for Regina and likes to keep busy. And some of them just appeared, how things do around here.' There was a pause as she pulled at a loose thread. 'And some of them belonged to the queen.'

Emma's hand froze in mid-air, the silk sleeve that was draped between her fingers slowly slipping free. 'What?'

'Mmm. Mostly from when she was younger, of course,' Maria held the dress in her arms up even higher. It was light blue with an excessively full skirt. 'This one was hers.'

'Really?'

Maria nodded, smiling nostalgically at it before replacing it in the wardrobe. 'She got engaged in this dress, actually. I don't know how I forgot that.'

Emma's eyes were glued to the dress as she spoke, trying to picture the mayor of Storybrooke wearing such a delicate shade of powder blue. She quickly found that she couldn't. 'To Snow White's father?'

'Yes.'

'You worked for her then?'

'I worked in her mother's castle until the wedding. And then when she disappeared, I was brought along here.'

'So you knew her… before.' Emma watched as Maria nodded, and then abruptly began to turn pale. She let go of the sleeve that she had been holding as quickly as she could.

'I should leave you to get dressed,' she mumbled, turning away from the open wardrobe and making her way across to the empty buckets that she had left by the door.

'I still don't know what to wear,' Emma said quietly. Maria turned to look at her with a strange expression on her face. It was quite evident that when she had been informed that she would be waiting on the personal guest of the Evil Queen, she had been expecting someone of a slightly different disposition to be marching across the stone floor of that bedroom.

'Take your bath, Miss Swan,' she said with a smile. 'I'll be back shortly with some new clothes. No skirts.'

Emma nodded. 'Thank you, Maria. I appreciate it.'

Maria gave her usual curtsey and left the room, leaving Emma to pull off her makeshift night clothes and sink her body down into the cloudy bathwater.

* * *

'Good morning, Miss Swan.' Regina spoke these words the moment she heard the footsteps that had been leading towards her office come to a halt in the open doorway. Her head was down as she gazed upon the reams of paper before her, but when there was no reply she curiously glanced up. Emma stood across the room, once again wearing riding clothes but this time ones that were the right size: under a dark green fitted jacket with long tails she wore a tightly fitting black shirt, tucked into dark brown leather trousers. Her black riding boots reached just below her knees. She was leaning against the heavy doorframe with her hands clasped uncomfortably before her, smiling slightly with her eyes on the queen. Behind her desk, Regina was wearing a floor-length dress made of red velvet. Streaks of scarlet ran through the sides of her pinned up hair. However, other than that, she wore very little make up and her usually bright red lips were pale and caught between her teeth. She looked back at Emma with a curious expression.

'Miss Swan,' she said flatly. 'You found some clothes that fit.'

Emma's smile slipped, but she replied, 'I did. I thought that I might be ruining your reputation if I was following you around looking like a sack of potatoes.'

Regina laughed shortly. 'Indeed,' she said, looking back down at the large sheet of paper lying in front of her. 'This can only be an improvement.'

Emma began to walk across the room, standing awkwardly in front of the desk as she waited for Regina to look back up again. She was distracted by the map that she had spread across the desk however, her lips moving as she silently mouthed the names of various towns and roads. Emma watched them shaping the words but never producing them. Eventually her green eyes moved back up towards the queen's sparsely made up face, looking at the smooth line of her cheekbones and inevitably wondering where the usual sweep of dark eyelashes had gone.

'What are you looking at?' Emma eventually asked, her voicing sounding loud and grating in the silent room. From the other side of its stone walls she could hear the guards shouting in the courtyard; the creak of wooden wheels slowly turning as carts and wagons were dragged across the wide space. But beyond that she could hear nothing: no hunters in the forest, no children playing just outside of the castle's walls. Emma guessed that all of those men she had seen frozen in the forest the night before had belonged to the palace in some way, and now that their curse was lifted, the wood would remain unnaturally empty until they returned.

Regina looked up, resting both of her arms on the table in front of her. 'Maps. We need to plan our route across the kingdom.'

'I guessed that,' Emma replied, moving around to the other side of the desk until she was stood next to the queen's chair. 'What I meant was, what are these places? Where are we going?'

Forcing herself not to sigh, Regina turned the map slightly so that it was faced in Emma's direction. Stretching her left hand across to the far western side of the land it depicted, she stabbed a long finger against a tiny drawing of her own castle.

'This is where we are now.' She then ran the same finger along a thin black line that stretched between that small drawing to the complete opposite side of the kingdom. 'And that's where we're going.'

Emma peered more closely at it, noting the shape of the sharp jut of the land that reached out into the sea. 'Is that the safe haven?'

'Indeed it is,' the queen replied, sitting back in her chair and crossing her hands over in her lap. 'I've never been there personally. But luckily for me, I have someone with me who's quite an expert in what I might find waiting for me there.'

Emma laughed to herself, leaning further forwards across the map and taking in all of the small details that the black line had crossed through. _The dwarves' cottage_. _Red / Granny's house_. The line then took a sharp turn upwards towards the northern coast of the land, where it settled on another drawing of a castle. _Snow White's palace_. The corners of Emma's mouth fell.

'They wouldn't have taken him there,' she said quietly, her finger resting on the deserted building. Between its pencil lines she could see the crumbling walls of what was once to be her home: its battered doors, its burnt nursery. She could see her mother stood alone in the centre of its blackened floor and she forced her hand away from the picture, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

All the while Regina sat back in her chair, looking curiously upwards at the woman who stood beside her.

'You're certain of that?' she asked.

'Positive.' Emma shifted on her feet. 'I went there. There's nothing to take him back to.'

'I doubt that there's very much of these other places for them to take him back to either, dear,' Regina questioned, raising her chin.

'But it's much easier to rebuild a cottage than it is to reassemble a castle,' Emma replied. 'Trust me. If they did take him there, they'd only get him right back out again. They won't be there by the time we arrive. I promise.'

Regina nodded in response, and Emma continued to trace the line throughout the trees that covered the vast kingdom. Regina watched. From where she was sitting at the saviour's waist, she caught the strong scent of vanilla from the water that she insisted her servants use in all of the baths. Emma's blonde curls fell forwards across her face as she leant across the desk. Regina watched them as they cascaded across her shoulders, down her back, hanging effortlessly and seemingly without Emma even noticing them. Regina's own hair was pulled tightly back from her face and she could feel it pinching, the tiny hairs at her temples and neck snapping as she turned her head. Those two streaks of scarlet paint were sticking to her skull and she wished that she hadn't let her servant to come near her that morning. Once her hair was done, she had asked to girl to leave, choosing to do her make up for herself and eventually leaving her face nearly clean of it. The physical weight of it had smothered her the night before. She had looked across the table at Emma's own skin, barely covered and glowing in the pathetic light, and she had felt ugly and garish sat beside her.

It had only taken her twelve hours, but she already knew that she wasn't the Evil Queen that the people in this castle had been waiting for.

'How long is this going to take us?' Emma suddenly asked, reaching up and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Regina jumped slightly, looking back up at her with vague eyes resting on her sharp cheekbones. The smell of vanilla was making her feel slightly lightheaded. She shook her head and, forcing herself to sit upright once more, took another look at the map.

'Well,' she said, 'by my normal methods of transport – approximately ten minutes.'

Emma looked down at her, one eyebrow slightly raised.

'But as I've agreed not to do that anymore,' the queen continued. 'We'll have to take horses. Which means that if we want to hit all of these stops – it should take us about a fortnight.'

'Jesus,' Emma muttered, turning around and sitting down on the edge of the desk. Her eyes looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting around one another in her lap. 'I didn't realise this place was so huge.'

'I don't actually think I did either,' Regina wrinkled her nose slightly. 'But that's probably because, towards the end, I never really went anywhere.'

'Not even to terrorise the subjects?' Emma said with a smile. Regina rolled her eyes at her, not responding. She didn't need to know that she had in fact done that on many occasions, when she had once enjoyed it.

Emma went back to tangling up her own fingers, and Regina continued to watch her. With a stab of irritation she was not for the first time struck by the beauty of this woman: this incredibly annoying and intrusive woman who had on so many occasions just about ruined her. This was the person who had destroyed everything she had ever worked for, making her feel not only hopeless, but utterly worthless. Since the day they had met she had been filled with an overwhelming amount of resentment for her – and yet she couldn't deny that just looking at her was enough to make her scrape off her full face of make up and go about the castle with her poor, human eyes bared to the world.

She quickly reminded herself, however, that she was nonetheless still her competition. While Emma was around Henry would never truly be hers, and so what they needed to do was to get on with finding him. Then maybe, once they were back in Storybrooke, she would have a chance at getting him to trust her again. Without Emma interrupting them with stories and lies about what a useless, terrible mother she was. Once she had Henry back safely once more, this whole ridiculous façade could finally end.

'Anyway, Miss Swan,' Regina raised herself up from the chair and looked down at the woman perched on the edge of her desk. 'We do need to get moving soon. I'll inform my servants that they need to pack the supplies for our trip, and I'll have someone ready the horses. Shall we meet in the courtyard in an hour?'

'That's fine,' Emma nodded, standing up again and watching as Regina swept across the room in a trail of red velvet. She had almost reached the door when suddenly a voice called her back.

'Wait.'

Regina turned with a sigh. 'Yes, Miss Swan?'

'I'm sorry,' Emma shuffled her feet, looking slightly nervous. 'It's just… I don't actually know how to ride a horse.'

There was an excruciating pause. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Yeah,' Emma shrugged, her nose wrinkling. 'Apparently it's not a skill that they teach in many foster homes.'

Regina groaned to herself, throwing her head back. 'This is ridiculous. How am I meant to teach you how to ride a horse in under an hour?'

'We can still go,' Emma suggested, taking a few steps forwards. 'I could learn on the journey.'

'Not a chance.'

'Then you must have a carriage we can take?'

'That will take twice as long. We'd have to stick to the roads and take at least five more men with us.' She sighed again, leaning back against the door frame and forcing herself not to glare at the woman who was undoubtedly the bane of her entire existence.

Emma bit her lip, trying to think of another helpful suggestion, and failing. She shrugged again. 'I'm sorry. I don't know what else we can do.'

Regina's head fell to one side, her dark eyes scanning the blonde woman's face for any traces of a challenge. She found none. Eventually she pushed herself off of the wall and placed her hands on her hips, nearly choking on the words as they came out of her mouth.

'I'll meet you in the courtyard in fifteen minutes, then.'

She turned to leave. Emma called after her again.

'Fifteen minutes? Why?'

Regina kept walking, not looking back as she called over her shoulder, 'Because I'm going to teach you how to ride a horse today, Miss Swan. That's why.'

* * *

The young boy crouched amongst the leaves, his elbows tucked in at his sides as he waited in the silence for a sight of the animal. Beads of sweat were clinging to the strings of hair that fell across his forehead, running down his temple and underneath the collar of his shirt. The forest had been cool this morning, but as the sun had risen the temperature amongst the trees had soared with it. He now regretted wearing a thick sweater over his shirt, but knew even by now that attempting to remove it would reveal his location in a second.

From somewhere nearby, he heard the snap of a twig. He froze. In his right hand he clutched a small dagger while his left clung onto a nearly branch for support. He had been crouched into the bushes like that for half an hour, and his back ached. His hunched shoulders had been crying out at him for most of that, but now the pain disappeared as his sharp ears focused on working out where exactly the sound had come from. He squinted his eyes, scanning the forest floor, watching for a flash of grizzled coat or yellow eyes. He saw neither.

Then the growling started from directly behind him and he spun around with a shout, falling onto his back as the animal towered over him.

He sighed, picking up the red cloak from the floor next to him and flinging it over the wolf's back. Ruby appeared from under the folds, laughing at the boy lying beneath her.

'I suck at this, don't I?' Henry asked sullenly, throwing the knife to the floor and shrugging off his thick sweater.

'No, you don't,' Ruby replied, helping him up off of the floor. 'I promise. You're doing really well. You just need to work on the breathing – like I said, short and sharp through the nose, like oxygen is sparse.'

'I'll make even more noise if I pass out in the bushes,' Henry grumbled. Ruby let out a bark of laughter, wrapping her arm around his shoulders.

'Don't be so hard on yourself!' she said into his damp hair. 'You've only been doing this for a few hours. These things take time, Henry, especially when the only hunting you've done before today has been on those weird computer games of yours.'

'My mom never let me play those games,' Henry replied, firmly ignoring the pang that came with realising that he hadn't said that word since he had arrived in this land the day before.

'All the more reason why you should suck at it, then,' Ruby laughed. 'Come on. Let's go back to the cottage and see if lunch is ready yet.'

They began to retrace their steps across the woods, Ruby following their own tracks without needing to think about it. Henry walked at her side, not speaking. Eventually he became distracted by a small blue bird that was darting about above their heads. He squinted at it, wondering if, since he obviously hadn't received her aptitude for hunting, he had inherited the ability to talk to animals from his grandmother. Listening carefully and watching as its wings fluttered violently in order to keep it steady in the air, he tried to deduce what it was chirping about. It began to hurt his head within seconds. But only a moment later, before he could begin to make up some kind of translation in his head, the noise was cut abruptly short by an arrow whistling through the air and spearing the bird through its minute chest.

Ruby leapt in front of Henry, her arms out, pushing him back against the nearest tree. Even as a human, Henry could hear the snarl coming from her sharp jaws. Her wide eyes scoured the forest, a deadly gleam waiting for someone to appear.

'Who's there?' she barked, her right hand gripping tightly onto Henry's wrist before he could step out from behind her. 'Hey! _Who's there_?!'

There was a rustling. It came from further away than either of them had expected, and yet they both heard it immediately.

Eventually a man appeared in the distance. A low growl came from Ruby's throat as he approached, walking casually through the trees with his strong chin jutting forwards. He was tall – much taller than anyone Henry had known in Storybrooke – and had eyes that were impossibly dark. They made the blood in Henry's veins run cold. Embedded in olive skin and surrounded by thick, black lashes, those eyes never blinked as he sauntered towards them. His green shirt hung from his muscular frame, only pinned into place by the string of the bow that was cutting across the whole of his upper body. In his left hand he carried a dark brown sack, the bottom of it stained crimson with blood that hadn't quite dried yet. Ruby took a step back, pushing Henry more fiercely against the tree.

'Damn,' the man said, taking in the sight of the arrow embedded in the tiny bird only inches away from where the pair stood. 'Missed.'

'Who the _hell_ are you?' Ruby snarled, raising her chin in order to meet his gaze. She didn't sound afraid, not to anyone who didn't know her. But Henry could feel her rapid pulse against his wrist and he knew that the mere sight of another person in this abandoned world had thrown off her usual unshakable confidence.

'I'd rather find out who _you_ are,' he drawled, dragging his eyes away from his tiny kill and instead settling them on the strong face of the woman stood before him. 'I am quite sure I've never met _you _before.'

'And your way of introducing yourself is to try and shoot me,' she replied. 'How charming.'

'That's what they call me,' he raised an eyebrow in a smirk, bending down to rip the arrow from the bird's chest before kicking the useless body away into the undergrowth. 'I'm a regular Prince Charming.'

'No you're not,' Henry spoke up before Ruby could shush him.

'And who,' the man spoke slowly, easily leaning over Ruby's shoulder to see who stood behind her, 'is this?'

'Does it matter who we are?' Ruby snapped, finally releasing Henry from her grip but making sure that he stood as close to her side as possible. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?'

'My name is Robert,' he replied calmly, his eyes still on Henry. 'And I live here.'

'No one lives here.'

'Apparently you do.'

'That's a fairly recent development,' Ruby bit out.

'On a foreign exchange program, are you?' Robert replied, his lips twisting upwards. 'Didn't realise we have the capacity for those anymore.'

Ruby ignored him. 'I don't understand how you're here. The queen's curse—'

'Didn't affect everyone,' he replied shortly. 'Who's the kid?'

'He's not important.' Ruby shook her head. 'How did it not—'

'There's a safe haven,' Robert said. He had been wiping his arrow clean of blood on his green shirt, and now he quickly pushed it back into the quiver strung across his back. Henry's eyes remained glued to the copper-coloured stain it left behind. 'Hey. Boy. What's your name?'

'Don't answer him,' Ruby said over her shoulder. Henry remembered the last time those instructions had been uttered to him, and what was being hidden from him then. He crossly shook himself free of Ruby's arm.

'I'm Henry,' he said, his chin firmly up in the air as he met the giant's shadowed gaze. 'I'm eleven years old and I'm the son of Snow White's daughter. Anything else you're dying to know?'

As Ruby sighed, Robert raised an eyebrow at the young boy's tone. His face was unsmiling, and yet something new glimmered about his lips.

'No,' he said coolly. 'I think that will do.'

'Good,' Ruby snapped, taking hold of Henry's arm once more and pulling him to one side. 'Because we have places to go and you are in our way.'

'Ah,' he said, crossing his arms over the mountain of his chest. 'And I'm guessing that I can't come with you?'

'No.'

'Pity. I would like to get to know you a bit better,' he drawled, his eyes openly slipping down to the deep plunge of Ruby's corset.

'No,' Ruby repeated.

'And your boy,' Robert continued, even as Ruby began to drag Henry away from him. 'It doesn't matter that I'd be willing to teach him how to shoot one of these, I suppose?'

Henry immediately stopped, watching as the man gestured towards his bow. Ruby grabbed at his arm yet again and pulled him further away.

'It doesn't.'

'Didn't think so,' he replied, leaning against a tree as he watched them go. Ruby pulled hard on Henry's arm and he reluctantly followed her, only turning his head back when the man was nearly out of sight.

Robert pointed down to the ground beside his feet.

_Here_, he mouthed, no longer smirking. _Nightfall_.

Henry turned away again, his cheeks flushing. He let Ruby drag him for another twenty paces, his teeth gritted together with anger and overwhelming curiosity. Turning his head back again a few moments later, he saw with annoyance that the man was gone. Only an a silver arrow embedded deep in the damp soil marked the spot where he had been stood.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

When Emma arrived in the courtyard exactly fourteen minutes later, Regina was already there. She was stood in the enormous gateway with her hands thrust into the pockets of the pale blue riding jacket that she had put on, facing away from the castle with her eyes on the silent woods opposite. She didn't move even as Emma reached her side.

'Everything okay?' Emma asked after a moment, her eyes on the queen's dark hair which was now devoid of paint and pins and was instead falling free across her face, the same as it always had done back in Storybrooke. Her expression was somewhat unfamiliar, however. Emma couldn't read it.

Eventually she nodded. 'Fine.'

Emma's eyes followed her gaze back into the unmoving trees and she bit her lip. 'Are you… are you thinking about Henry?'

'Of course I am,' Regina said shortly. 'Aren't you?'

Emma ignored the bite to her voice and replied as gently as she could, 'He'll be alright, you know. He's with friends.'

'And what if he's not?' Regina responded, her voice cracking as she turned to look at Emma. 'What if he went through too late and he's all on his own?'

'Then he'll still be okay.' Emma reached out and lightly touched Regina's elbow. 'He's the son of a pretty badass queen, after all. I don't think we need to worry about him hurting himself.'

Regina swallowed. _The son of a queen._ She couldn't ignore the small lump that rose in her throat following these words.

Eventually she gave a small shrug as she replied, 'You can't possibly know that.' Her voice was tiny, and Emma gave her arm another squeeze.

'I can. I trust him.'

'So do I,' Regina rolled her glassy eyes up to the grey sky. 'But I don't think I trust this world anymore. I just wish we could get to him now.' She took a deep breath before forcing herself to meet the blonde woman's green eyes once more. 'Emma. Please. Take a moment to reconsider – in the weeks it might take us to find him, _anything _could happen. We can't—'

'Regina,' Emma interrupted with a sad shake of her head. 'If we show up at his feet in a swirl of purple smoke, do you really think he's going to come charging into our arms and agree to go home with us right away?'

Regina opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it again. 'We could use to magic to get near him,' she said slowly. 'And then walk the rest of the way.'

Emma frowned at her until she stopped talking.

'We have to do this properly,' she said quietly. 'He needs to know that we're changing. Both of us.'

'But what if he's in trouble?' Regina asked, her voice wobbling.

'There's no one _here_, Regina,' Emma gestured towards the deserted woods. 'And since I doubt that Henry's stupid enough to fire a gun into a field of ogres, I don't really know what else could hurt him.'

Regina rolled her eyes, laughing slightly. 'True. But then again no one that I know is stupid enough to fire a gun into a field of ogres.' She didn't register the awkward silence that followed these words.

Eventually she sighed, and then nodded. 'Okay. Okay, fine, you're right. We can do this the old fashioned way. I just hope… I hope he's with them. I can't think of him running around these woods alone.'

'If nothing else, it'll give him longer to miss us,' Emma smirked. Regina raised an eyebrow.

'I highly doubt that. He'll have the dwarves teaching him how to mine for fairy dust by now. The son I know would never want to come above ground again after that.'

Emma laughed until a silence began to fall between the pair. Eventually Regina sighed, pulling at the bottom of her blue riding jacket, and gestured to the dusty lane that led from the side of the castle down the hillside. 'Shall we?'

'Lead on, your majesty,' Emma replied. They began to walk down the path together without saying another word. Regina bunched her fists into the pockets of her jacket, realising that her irritation from earlier that morning had almost completely subsided. She took a step away from her companion and kept her eyes on the sandy ground below their booted feet, listening to the swishing of Emma's curls as they brushed against the thick material of her borrowed jacket.

After ten minutes of walking the wrought iron castle stood far in the distance, a dark blemish on the watercolour wash of the rest of the kingdom. Ahead of them lay the stable. No more than a wooden hut nestled between two small hills, Emma wrinkled her nose in confusion at the strange building that seemed to belong to neither the queen's fortress nor the rolling verdigris of the enchanted forest. Stood twenty feet in front of the building was a young man, his dark hair scraped back into a long pony tail, the reins of a horse clutched in either hand: the animal to his left had a glossy black coat, whereas the one to his right was a deep blonde. As the two women approached both of the horses began to toss their heads, breathing heavily. The man, however, remained perfectly still, his dark eyes glued to the floor.

'Which one is mine?' Emma asked, looking nervously at the animals. She had never been near one before and they were much larger than she had been expecting. Regina watched as she edged closer, her fists tightly clenched by her sides.

'Whichever one you want,' Regina replied. As she spoke she made a conscious effort not to look at either of the animals. It had been a long time since she'd last ridden a horse – her memories of them were not her fondest ones.

'They're not yours?' Emma asked, taking a small step towards the blonde one. It watched her curiously. She wanted to reach out and stroke it, but she found herself hesitating. She began to wonder how much it took for them to bite your hand off and immediately retreated.

'They're mine, obviously,' Regina said softly, looking off at the distant forest. 'But I've never ridden either of them. You can use whichever one you prefer.'

Emma turned her eyes back to the two horses. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered by her presence anymore, preferring to lazily flick their tails about in the crisp air as they waited for something new to happen. She still longed to pet the blonde one. Her own hair fell into her eyes and she knew that they went perfectly together – if she had to learn to ride a horse, and if she had to spend two weeks on one, then this one would suit her faultlessly. She nervously licked her lips, ready to take a step forwards, but quickly turned to check with Regina that this was okay. When she saw the queen looking sadly back at her, her dark eyes focusing on the glistening coat of the blonde horse like a child pressed up against the window of a toy store, Emma stopped. Her gaze fell upon Regina's shadowy features. She knew without asking that a dark queen would have only ever been given dark horses to ride. And she knew that watching Regina riding on a horse made of the same colour as Rumplestiltskin's gold would look more perfect than she ever could.

She turned back towards the animals and took three quick steps to her left. Holding out a hand to the dark horse's muzzle, she watched as it gently nudged at her fingertips.

'Nope,' she said calmly. 'I like this one.'

* * *

'Emma, I told you,' Regina called out across the field, '_pull _the reins to get him to stop. Don't squeeze your legs.'

Meanwhile Emma hurtled across the opposite side of the grass, her knuckles turning white as she tugged on the reins. 'I'm _trying_!'

Regina watched from her stationary horse, her expression blank.

'Dear god,' she muttered to herself, nudging the animal forwards until it began to gently trot across to where Emma was being cannonballed across the grass. Regina knew from watching, and from experience, that she wasn't actually moving very fast – but the terrified expression on Emma's face suggested that she felt otherwise.

Regina pulled up alongside the startled horse and eventually the four bodies ground to a halt, Emma's breath wheezing out of her tightly coiled frame. Regina pressed her lips together, forcing herself not to laugh. She still remembered learning how to ride, although she had been a third of Miss Swan's age at the time. She looked at Emma's flushed face and recalled her own horror the first time she had been unable to stop her horse from cantering, her instructor hollering commands that she couldn't hear from the side of the enclosure, the sharp wind whistling past her ears. It had been then that her mother had decided to come down from the castle to see how her daughter was doing. Even as Regina had whirled around the field, her eyes squinting until they were almost shut, she had still seen the disappointment carved into Cora's face. A purple haze had enveloped both her and her childhood steed before she had been able to pull on the reins again. When Cora had told her that she simply needed to get back on the horse, she hadn't bothered to hide the revulsion from her voice.

Regina looked at Emma and saw that she was trying not to cry.

'Are you okay, Miss Swan?' she asked slowly, holding out a hand to steady her.

'Fine,' Emma nodded sharply, her hands still gripping onto the reins as she forced air back into her lungs. 'I just suck at this.'

'You're new at this,' Regina corrected her. 'It takes time. I promise you.'

'How long did it take you?'

'Longer than a day,' Regina leant back on her saddle and looked up at the clouds for a moment. 'Years, really. I hated it as a child. I only learned because my mother made me.'

'And then?' Emma asked, shakily taking one hand off of the reins in order to brush her tangled curls out of her eyes.

'I only started to enjoy it when I was a teenager,' Regina replied, her voice growing quieter. 'I began to ride more when we… we hired a new stable boy. I started to like it without realising. And then I stopped liking it so much quite soon afterwards.'

Emma froze, kicking herself for her stupidity. 'Oh, Christ. I'm sorry, Regina, I didn't mean—'

'It's quite alright,' Regina said, abruptly turning her horse away and beginning to lead it back across the field. 'Come on, Miss Swan. Let's try again.'

Emma followed unsteadily behind, the black horse padding contentedly across the grass like he had begun to possess an unnatural fondness for the complete idiot that was currently sat upon his back.

Over the next hour Emma fell off of her horse four times, each time hitting the ground with a thud that resonated across the field to where Regina was watching. On every occasion she winced on her companion's behalf, leading her blonde horse over to the incident and hopping to the ground in order to help her up again.

'Thanks,' Emma would mumble, bending down to dust off her clothes. Then, without another word, she would grit her teeth and catch hold of the horse's reins, clambering gracelessly onto its back again with a low groan. After another hour the sun had broken though the morning's thick grey clouds, perching firmly in the middle of the sky, and both women removed their heavy jackets. As Regina watched Emma guiding her horse around the boundary of the field, moving cautiously but at least not falling off, she noticed from her distance that bruises were already blossoming across the pale skin of her back.

'Do you need a break, Miss Swan?' Regina called out, watching the blonde shake her head in response. She then fell off again. Regina trotted over to help her up and found her still lying on her back, gasping up into the cloudless sky with her eyes closed.

She jumped down from her horse, her forehead furrowed. 'Are you okay?' she asked, guiding the two horses away before crouching down beside her. Emma opened her eyes, choking out a laugh. Her green eyes were glassy with the tears that she was fighting back.

'I'm fine.'

'You're not. Sit up.'

Emma shakily pushed herself off of the ground, clutching at her aching sides. Regina moved around behind her and, peering down at her bare back, saw that six large bruises were already fully formed. Reaching out, she gently put a hand on the lower half of Emma's spine. She immediately jumped.

'What are you doing?' she asked over her shoulder. Regina put her other hand on the side of the blonde's body, running her fingers over the nodules of her rib cage.

'Checking that you haven't broken anything,' she mumbled, her brow creased in concentration as both hands began to skim over the delicate knots.

'I told you that I'm fine,' Emma replied.

'I've never seen you cry before,' Regina said. 'You're clearly not.'

'I'm not _crying_. I just—'

'Miss Swan. Please shut up.'

Emma snapped her mouth shut and leaned her chin on top of her knees, breaking out of her sulk only when Regina's fingers pressed on a tender bruise between two ribs.

'Sorry,' Regina said as she visibly winced. 'It's not broken. You're just a bit battered.'

'You don't say,' Emma mumbled, feeling the pressure of the queen's hands leaving her back and allowing herself to relax slightly. Regina came round to sit opposite her, letting her legs stretch out before her on the grass in a way that Emma could only stare at. The queen didn't notice. Looking down at her booted feet, there was a slight frown etched on her face that told Emma not to interrupt her train of thought unless she wanted to be shouted at again. The blonde bit her lip and waited to be spoken to.

The words that eventually came surprised her. 'Have you thought about what to name your horse?'

'What?'

'Your horse, Miss Swan,' she repeated slowly, raising an eyebrow. 'I'm concerned that if we keep referring to it as 'the dark one' we might accidentally summon Mr Gold.'

Emma blinked. 'Is that a joke?'

'Of course it's a joke,' Regina rolled her eyes. 'He's not Beetlejuice, Emma. What's the matter with you?'

'Sorry,' Emma replied, her hand still placed across her tender ribs. 'I don't always get your jokes.'

'I don't tend to make many of them.'

'That's not true. There was that time where you framed Mary Margaret for murder. That was _hilarious_.'

Regina's eyes immediately narrowed and she opened her mouth to tell Emma where she could go, when the blonde suddenly started giggling. Regina blinked in bewilderment.

'Are you sure you don't have a concussion?' she asked. Emma simply shrugged, the laughter ebbing away as the pain from her back and shoulders took over once more.

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes, Regina pulling at random blades of grass and twisting them between her fingers while Emma looked aimlessly into the distance. The two horses remained a short distance away. Emma began to watch as her dark horse nudged Regina's with its head, looking considerably disappointed when its blonde companion refused to reciprocate and therefore repeating the action several times until the other horse began to walk away. A smile creased onto her face and suddenly she said, 'George.'

Regina looked up. 'Excuse me?'

'My horse,' she repeated, nodding across at where her horse was following Regina's, demanding that he should pay attention to him. 'That's his name.'

'Why George?'

'Because he's a pain in the ass,' Emma laughed. 'He reminds me of the monkey. He's George.'

Regina couldn't help but nod. 'Yes. I think you might be right.'

'What about yours?' Emma asked, now looking directly at her companion as she turned back around.

'He doesn't have a name.'

'Why not?'

'I don't know.'

'I have to name mine, but yours is off limits?'

'Not exactly. I just hadn't thought about it.'

'How about Whale?' Emma smiled darkly. 'He's got the same hair.'

Regina laughed in spite of herself. 'Emma, I am not naming my horse Whale, I can promise you that.' She began to push herself off of the ground, holding out a hand to help Emma up. 'But I'll think about it. And I'll let you know.'

Emma shrugged. 'The best I can hope for,' she said, then began to deflate as she looked back across at the newly-named George. 'Okay. I suppose I'd better get going again. Feel free to ignore the no-magic rule by whipping up a mattress or two next time I look like I'm about to fall off.'

She staggered across the field to where George was standing, looking dozily about him without registering her presence. It took her several minutes to clamber back on top of him, Regina watching from her horse's side with a small smile on her face.

'Come on then,' she muttered into the animal's side after a few moments. 'Let's at least try and keep her alive, shall we?'

* * *

As the afternoon wore on, Emma's antics on the horse stopped being painful and eventually became hilarious. Having finally mastered the art of staying on the horse, it became blindingly clear that even so, she would never be a celebrated horsewoman: the moment that she managed to coax George into moving faster than a saunter, he simply began to run. For the fifth time that afternoon she shot past Regina who, sat in the very centre of the field with her hands pressed across her mouth, had long since given up trying catch her. Obscenities flew from Emma's mouth as she heard only howls of laughter coming back at her from Regina's lips.

'Regina, I'm going to kill you if you don't help me!'

'I'm willing to bet that you won't be able to,' Regina called back, choking back tears as she watched Emma's arms cling desperately onto her horse's neck, abandoning the reins altogether.

'_Help!_' was the responding scream. Regina cackled to herself, focusing on the delighted expression on George's face as he tore about the field. She hadn't realised before then that horses could look happy. She also hadn't really realised that she still could too.

'_Regina I am fucking serious come and help me now or I swear to fucking God_—' the final scream was one long string of incoherence, but finally Regina nudged her horse into action with tears still clinging onto her eyelashes. Trotting alongside Emma and George a few moments later, she reached out to grab hold of the reins that Emma had abandoned. The horses both began to slow down. Emma sighed with relief, shaking her head, and then in a red-hot flash of panic lost her balance altogether. Reaching for the nearest solid object – Regina – she slipped sideways from the horse and landed with a dull thud on the floor. Half a second later, Regina landed on top of her.

'You know,' the queen huffed after she had caught her breath again, 'I really hate to say this, but your mother is much more pleasant to rescue than you are.'

'I think you punctured my lung,' Emma groaned, trying to roll over but, with the weight of the queen on top of her, failing. A sudden sharp pain shot through her right shoulder and she bit down on her lip, stopping herself from shouting out.

'I did not,' Regina replied, slowly realising that she was in fact lying between Emma's legs with her head resting somewhere near her shoulder and immediately beginning to disentangle herself. 'And you pulled me down!'

'You wouldn't help me!'

Regina, pausing in her attempts to extract herself from the tangle of limbs, starting laughing again. 'Oh, come on. It was funny. Why would I have stopped that?'

Emma glared up at her. 'The Evil Queen after all, it would seem.'

Regina simply laughed once again. Her upper body was now free of the mess, but from the waist down she was still pinned between Emma's aching legs. She held herself up across the blonde woman using only her arms, looking down at her flushed cheeks with a wicked grin.

'Through and through, dear,' she said coolly. Emma laughed for a moment, covering her eyes with her hand. When she pulled it away again she realised that Regina was still lying on top of her. Her dark eyes were unblinking as she looked down at the woman below her, a small frown creasing her forehead. Emma swallowed but said nothing. The two pairs of eyes met as the women lay tangled amongst one another, Regina ignoring her shaking arms as Emma slowly breathed in the smell of earth and vanilla. In the second before she was released from the ground, Emma noticed that the queen's eyes weren't black after all, but a deep, melting, caramel brown.

Regina dusted herself off as Emma slowly pushed herself up from the grass, her shoulder screaming with the effort. She placed her hands on the small of her back, leaning back until her vision swam with the dusky pink sky that was already calling in the night time. As she straightened up she watched Regina gathering up both of the horses, her black hair flustered and her clothes dirty. She smiled for a second as she handed George's reins over to Emma, then began to lead her guest back to the stable.

'I think what we can deduce from today,' Regina said after a few moments, 'is that we will not be travelling any faster than a slow amble over the next few days. Is that agreed?'

'Agreed,' Emma nodded, trying to ignore the sharp pain that shot through her shoulder every time her right foot jarred against the floor. 'In fact, it might be faster for me to walk beside you.'

'It would be even faster if I left you in the castle and went off on my own,' Regina flashed her a wicked smile. 'But, alas, we do not live in a perfect world.'

'Not exactly,' Emma said quietly. Regina didn't reply.

As the stable slowly came into view, Regina's steps grew slower and her eyes grew fainter. Emma felt the shift in the silence around them and she waited for the stable boy to appear, to take the horses from them. A light burned from somewhere within the wooden structure, but no one appeared. Regina began to absently pat at her hair, trying to smooth it into place in a way that Emma had never seen her do before. She took a deep breath before she was able to force out her next words.

'Is this the stable where it happened?' It sounded more abrupt than she'd intended, far too loud in the stretched silence. She didn't know much about Daniel: only what Mary Margaret had told her, and even that had only held tiny pockets of detail. She knew that twelve year-old Snow had, however indirectly, been responsible for his death, and she knew that Regina still blamed her for this. But she also knew that Regina had gone very pale and was taking a very long time to be able to formulate a response to her question.

'No,' she said in a small voice. 'That was… at my mother's palace. There aren't any horses in that stable anymore.'

As they stepped closer Regina could hear more horses snuffling and stamping at the ground inside. Her heart caught in her ribcage. Daniel's body crumpled to the ground before her. She took another breath, her eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the horse's body beside her to remind her that she wasn't where she thought she was, she wasn't a child anymore: that Daniel was gone, but she was okay.

'Regina?' Emma's voice was soft as they stopped walking.

'It's okay,' she replied, forcing herself to open her eyes again. 'It's okay. I just… I don't really like stables very much.'

The silence that followed seemed to echo between the hills louder than her words had done. And then, without saying a single word, Emma was at her elbow, lightly pressing the reins from her hand and leading both of the horses into the stable by herself.

Regina watched her go, following the glow of her blonde hair into the dimming light. Her heart stopped beating quite so fast as she began to calm down. The gratitude that welled up inside took her by such intense surprise that she rocked back a step. And then another.

Emma reached the stable without turning back. The stable boy greeted her, taking the horses and speaking with her momentarily before leading them to their stalls. Emma took a deep breath, taking in the unfamiliar smell of horses and hay and a world that was still completely foreign to her, before turning back around to face the only familiar thing about it. In the darkness she thought that she could see the queen's shadow waiting for her. When she arrived back at the spot where she'd left her, however, she realised that she had been mistaken.

She pulled her borrowed jacket more tightly about her body, biting down on her lip so hard that she tasted blood, as she retraced her steps back to the castle with only the faint smell of vanilla keeping her company.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

The forest was silent as Henry finally managed to sneak out of the dwarves' cottage. Night had fallen half an hour before but he had found himself still sat at the tiny table, his knees bouncing up and down beneath it as he waited for the nine people sat about him to finish eating. The moment that Doc had placed his fork decisively in the centre of his plate, Henry let out an exaggerated yawn. Granny looked over at him and chuckled. 'Long day, kiddo?'

'Yeah. I'm really tired.' He made sure that his eyes remained on the table, slightly squinted, so that no one could read his expression. Ruby laughed.

'I had him running all around that forest today, Granny. I'm surprised he's still conscious.'

Henry smiled weakly. 'I might go to bed once we've cleared the table, if that's okay?'

Granny gestured towards the tiny door at the end of the corridor; the room that was barely a cupboard but now served as his bedroom. 'Go on, you can go now – you can hardly keep your eyes open as it is.'

'Okay. Thanks,' he replied, leaping up from his chair with an extravagant stretch of his arms. 'Goodnight.'

A chorus of farewells followed him down the hallway. He waited in his room for a moment, pressed up against the door to make sure that no one was following him, before quickly slipping on his coat and boots. He was out of the window and tearing across the clearing, his hot breath billowing out of him in clouds, thirty seconds later.

He was late, and yet Robert was still stood where he had last seen him. 'You took your time.'

'Sorry,' Henry gasped, leaning forwards on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. 'It was hard to get away.'

The enormous man was leaning against a nearby tree, his arms crossed over his vast chest as he peered down at the boy that stood before him. 'So your mom doesn't know you're here?'

Henry blinked, puzzled, and then he realised. 'Ruby's not my mom,' he replied. Robert didn't ask anything further of it. He just nodded, like this had simply clarified something that he had already known.

Handing Henry the half-sized bow that he had brought with him, they began to make their way through the densely packed trees, not saying a word. Henry's eyes kept sliding up to the silver arrows that were bouncing about in the quiver strapped across his back. Something about them was fascinating to him: they weren't merely shining in the way that polished metal does, but they somehow seemed to radiate light. In the dark woods where even the moonlight barely shone, they glowed against his green shirt. Henry tried to take a closer look but Robert suddenly turned around, peering down at him.

'You okay, kid?'

'Fine,' he replied quickly. 'Just trying to keep up.'

They eventually reached a clearing. Wooden targets were scattered amongst the surrounding trees, some of them enormous and clearly marked with scratches and nicks, whereas others were much smaller or hidden, barely seeming to have a dent on them.

Robert instructed Henry how to shoot without once firing an arrow himself. Instead his bow stood against his long, muscular leg, his enormous hand resting on top of it. Every now and then he would extend a finger and gently pluck at the string. Henry fumbled with his own bow, struggling to release an arrow at all on his first dozen attempts. But, slowly, as his confidence grew, his arrows gradually began to draw closer the nearest target. As he finally hit it, even with his young arms shaking with the effort, it split through the air and struck at its very centre. He turned back to Robert, grinning. He nodded in response, hardly registering what the boy had just done.

'Very good,' he said, plucking at his own bow once more.

'I never thought I'd be able to do that,' Henry said breathlessly, looking back at the target. It was still shaking from the blow, the leaves surrounding it rustling. He moved over to it and, with a considerable amount of effort, tugged the arrow free from its centre.

'Your mom never taught you?' Robert asked casually. Henry just shrugged.

'She… she never really had the chance,' he replied. 'I didn't know her until last year.'

'How's that?' Robert asked, sitting himself down on the floor and gesturing that Henry should fire another arrow. Henry took up the position that he had been taught, narrowing his eyes as he focused on the wooden target. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then released the arrow. It too sailed through the air and hit directly in the centre. Henry cheered to himself, turning back to Robert who nodded at him once more, now smiling.

'Well done,' he said. 'Anyway, you were saying? About your mother?'

'Oh,' Henry said, going over to collect the arrow again. 'Yeah. I was adopted, and I only just met my birth mom when I found her last year.'

'Were you adopted by a family?'

'No, just my other mom,' Henry said. 'Regina. She raised me until I found Emma again.'

Robert's hand, which had been reaching out to pluck at the bow string once more, froze in mid-air. His dark eyes slid up to Henry's face.

'Regina?' he asked in a flat voice. Henry's mouth immediately snapped shut and his gaze fell to the floor.

'Don't worry,' Robert quickly continued. 'I just know about the curse. Obviously. It was cast by Regina, the queen, wasn't it?'

Henry was quiet for another few moments, looking sheepishly down at his feet. When he did speak, his voice was tiny. 'She's not like that anymore.'

Robert nodded solemnly. 'I believe you. People change.'

'She tried to.'

'And that's good. She did it for you, no doubt?'

'Yeah,' Henry smiled weakly. 'She did. She isn't the Evil Queen anymore. She's a good person.'

Robert simply nodded, a small, sharp smile appearing on his lips that in the darkness Henry couldn't quite make out. 'I'll bet. I'll bet she is.'

* * *

A few hundred miles away on the other side of the kingdom, the candles around the queen's castle were being lit once more for dinner. The food was due to be served in less than half an hour and yet, across on the eastern side of the palace, Regina was still sat on the edge of her bed with only her robe wrapped around her. Her dark hair was dripping wet, slicked back from her bare face, her hands bouncing restlessly in her lap. She made no move to get changed into the silky black dress that was hanging up on the wall opposite her.

She had yet to fully calm down from the events of earlier that evening. As she had watched Emma leading the horses away from her, struggling to control the two animals alone just so that Regina wouldn't have to step foot inside the stable, the queen had felt a familiar pain jolting through her chest, and she had frozen to the spot. Then, without realising what she was doing, she had suddenly found herself running. Running away from the stable, running away from Emma, running away from the stamping of hooves and the thudding of Daniel's body as it crumpled to the floor at her feet, the ashes that had once made up his heart chasing after her on the sharp vanilla-scented breeze. Emma had done something kind for her, and in repayment she had left her there by herself. And she hated herself for it.

Except it hadn't just been that familiar pain that had sent her running, as much as she had tried to convince herself that it had been that and that alone. Emma had been stood in the stable, looking nothing at all like the man that she still missed every single day – she was small and blonde and overwhelmingly annoying. And yet Regina had still felt that sad, familiar skip of her heart as she'd looked at her. For a tiny second the warm feeling of being utterly comfortable had wrapped its arms back around her, and it had terrified her. Opening herself up to Emma Swan for that one single moment had hit her so hard in the chest that it had sent her flying backwards, her feet pounding across the sandy path back towards the castle before she realised what she was doing.

She pushed herself up off of the bed, pulling her robe more tightly about her as she began to pace the length of the room. She had been vigorously biting on her lip without realising and the taste of blood filled her mouth. Stopping in front of the mirror to examine it, she paused, looking more closely at herself. Behind her the stone floors and dark fabrics of her palace chambers seemed to dull the edges of her expression, and she was struck by how small she looked. This castle needed an Evil Queen and it wasn't her any more – but evidently she wasn't the young Regina that she used to be either. Storybrooke had ripped every identity that she had ever known away from her and left her as what she saw now: a small, dark-haired woman with a bloody lip and a heart that didn't work properly.

She moved away from the mirror and pulled the black dress on, smoothing the fabric down over her thighs. Her jaw was clenched into a tight line as she fought back the image of Emma getting ready on the opposite side of the castle, no doubt humming with embarrassment at how she had been left earlier. Regina closed her eyes. An Evil Queen wouldn't care about that. An Evil Queen wouldn't have been so weak as to break down at the sight of something as menial as a stable, leaving herself exposed to the judgment of a woman who already had more than enough ammunition to hit her exactly where it hurt.

Sitting herself down in front of her dressing table, Regina took one more look at her bare face before reaching for her selection of make up. It was her last night in this castle, the castle where, whether she liked it or not, she was queen. Summoning in two servants, a pair of hands began to scrape her wet hair back as make up was thickly applied to her face. She didn't smile as she watched them work. Once the finished product had appeared from below their fingers she simply rose from her seat, gliding across the room with her chin thrust into the air. She ignored the nerves that pitted about in her stomach, making her way down the enormous staircase to the dining hall for one last time.

* * *

Regina jumped with shock when she saw that Emma was already in her chair waiting for her. From the doorway she could only see the back of her head, her blonde hair piled up into a messy crown on top of her skull. However, even with that limited view Regina was still able to watch as her guest's body stiffened the moment that she heard the queen's approaching footsteps.

She didn't say a word as she entered the room. Sitting down in her place at the head of the table, Regina spread her skirts about her and took a deep breath, preparing herself to offer Miss Swan the old stony smile that was so familiar to them both. Her eyes fell upon her guest, and she froze. Her voice, sharp with surprise, escaped from her lips without a thought. 'Miss Swan?'

Quite inexplicably, Emma was wearing a dress. Her body was covered in dark grey satin, long sleeves resting across the arms of her chair and straight, spilling skirts just reaching down to the hard stone floor. The neck of the dress was high, cutting a fierce line directly across Emma's collar bone, but from where she was sat Regina could see that as soon as that line hit her shoulders it split down until it formed a sharp V-shape at the small of her uncovered back. A dark purple bruise was just about visible jutting out from underneath the smoky fabric on her right shoulder. All across the body were tiny gems, stitched on in no particular pattern so that Emma's torso looked like the very sky that was clouding over outside the castle's windows. Regina could only blink at her, the Evil Queen forgotten once more.

Emma's own gaze remained firmly planted on the empty plate before her, her hands clenched tightly in her silvery lap. She could feel the queen's confused eyes on her, but still she didn't look up.

'I was forced,' she said after a stretched silence. Her voice was strained. 'Apparently I really can't wear riding gear to a leaving feast.'

She sounded sullen, and Regina knew that she wasn't annoyed at her: she was hurt. She swallowed. The Evil Queen was not used to people being upset with her as opposed to merely hating her, and it was leaving a foul taste in her mouth. Shaking the thought from her head, she quickly motioned to the servants that they should begin serving the food. Below the table her thumb nails bit sharply into the palms of her hands as she stopped herself from reaching out and apologising.

The next ten minutes passed in a brittle silence. Emma remained completely still in her chair, letting the servants serve the food directly onto her plate and even then not going to eat it. Her wine too remained untouched. Regina forced herself to sit upright, focusing all of her energy on avoiding staring at her guest, the Evil Queen's voice shouting at her from inside her own head. She glanced up at the servants, who seemed completely unperturbed by the awkward quietness, and she reached for her wine glass. It was just as she was taking a sip that Emma finally exploded.

'Why did you disappear earlier?' She had obviously been holding this back since Regina had walked into the room, and yet she still looked confused at her own outburst.

Regina swallowed the wine that was in her mouth, hearing only the sound of her own heart furiously beating in her ears. When she replied it was in the calmest voice that she could summon. 'I assumed that you could take care of the horses by yourself,' she said. 'You did take the reins fairly assertively, after all.'

'That's not what…' Emma paused, catching herself. She took hold of her own wine glass in one trembling hand and took a deep breath. 'Where did you go?'

She had finally lifted her eyes from her plate as she spoke and Regina's breath caught in surprise, not expecting her teary expression to be quite so questioning.

'We have to plan our journey, Miss Swan,' she said slowly. 'It's all very well and good gallivanting about having horse riding lessons all day, but our son is out there, possibly on his own, and at some point we have to be serious about why we're here. So I went to look back over the maps again in order to finalise our route for tomorrow. Okay?'

Emma's teeth gritted together in annoyance. She knew that Regina was lying to her: her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were darker than normal, and it was blindingly obvious that she felt humiliated. In trying to do something kind, Emma had inadvertently pushed her back into being her old, closed self again, simply because Regina preferred being miserably impassable to being in any way vulnerable. She should have known. She should have understood that.

She put her glass back on the table with a sharp clunk and finally started to eat some of the vast meal that had been placed before her, chewing more violently than was strictly necessary. Regina watched her out of the corner of her eye, hesitant to say anything more. She felt less sure of herself now. Her guest's green eyes refused to look up at her and yet she could see the hurt and the rage reflected there as she choked down her food – it was a fury that she had caused and, as much as she tried to overlook it, it was already bothering her.

After another fifteen minutes of tense silence, the servants returned and the plates were cleared. Regina sat with her wine glass held loosely in her hand, biting her lip as she tried to decide on what was the best thing to say next. She was stopped from having to say anything at all by Emma abruptly standing up, her chair grating back against the stone floor. Regina's eyes fell onto the surprising grey dress before she could stop herself.

'Well then,' the blonde said, her fists clenched by her sides as she spoke. 'If we're leaving tomorrow morning then I suppose I should get some rest. Thank you for dinner, _your majesty_. Now, if you'll excuse me'

She left the table with her silver skirts trailing behind her, pushing the wooden doors open before the guards had even reached for the handles. Regina sat numbly in her chair, hearing the click of Emma's footsteps as they retreated through the castle, waiting for the sad stab of guilt to leave her stomach. After a minute it dawned on her that it wasn't going to.

She was tearing up the staircase with her lips set in a tight line only moments later, rushing down the western passage with her silk skirts bundled up in her fists. She could see Emma far ahead of her: her hands had reached up at some point during her journey and tugged a dozen hair pins free of her crown of blonde curls so that they fell in a tangle across the sharp dip in the back of her dress. Regina could see the angry line of her shoulders as she approached.

Hearing the footsteps behind her, Emma sped up. She had just reached the door to her bedroom when the queen finally caught her.

'Emma,' she said softly, waiting for her to turn around. When she did it was clear that although she wasn't crying, she desperately wanted to. Regina swallowed. 'I… it would seem that I need to learn to be more consistent with you.'

A deep line was etched between Emma's eyebrows as she replied. 'Regina, now is not the time.'

'I'm sorry,' Regina said quickly, taking a step forwards. Her arms hung awkwardly by her sides. Emma sighed, placing her hand on the door handle. She didn't look up as she spoke.

'I put on a _dress_ for you.'

The words were flat, and full of hurt. Regina just shook her head, unable to explain herself.

'Regina,' Emma said quietly, 'I don't know if I can deal with this. With you morphing into the Evil Queen before my eyes any time you get worried that you might have let me in too far.'

Regina clenched her hands into anxious fists, biting her lip. 'I… I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say.'

Emma laughed lightly, rolling her glassy eyes to the ceiling. 'I've had enough of people turning on me for no reason, Regina. I don't have the patience for it to happen all over again. If this is going to be an on-going thing… maybe we should consider conducting our searches solo.'

She turned to go into her room, her lips curved downwards. Regina took another quick step forwards, grabbing hold of Emma's wrist before she could push the door any further. 'No. Miss Swan, I am… I am sorry. I mean it. I shouldn't keep snapping at you and I will try to stop. I promise I will.'

Emma looked down at her soft grey sleeve, the fingers of the queen clasped desperately around it. As she looked back up again a moment later she found herself gazing directly into Regina's desolate, dark eyes, only inches away from her. They silently pleaded with her to not push her away like she had done to her only hours before. Emma smiled sadly.

'You don't need to close up again every time you dare to open up,' she said softly. 'I'm not going to judge you, Regina. But I'm also not your punching bag to use whenever you like. Think about that.'

Regina blinked, opening her mouth to reply but failing to think of anything that would help her to explain. Emma waited for a moment, waited for her to speak or to say something that would make her understand. When she silence stretched on and Regina's eyes began to glimmer with desperate tears, she sighed once more.

'Goodnight, Madame Mayor,' she said quietly, prising her arm free of Regina's fingers. The door shut behind her with a click, leaving Regina stood alone in the corridor with only her queen's dress and her damaged heart to keep her company.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

The two women left the castle achingly early the next morning, the watery grey sunlight barely breaking through the thin clouds that hung on the horizon. Emma clung onto George's reins, struggling not to yawn, while Regina rode several metres ahead of her, her back perfectly straight underneath her dark red jacket. The pair didn't speak. Regina had half expected Emma to not show up that morning, leaving her to go about their journey on her own. But at half past five when the queen had gone down to the courtyard, her eyes narrowed from a night of no sleep, she found that Emma Swan was already waiting for her. They had mounted their horses, both animals laden down with the bags of supplies and food packed for them by the servants the night before, without a word to one another. The ride had begun moments later with Emma's eyes looking permanently down at her horse's back, letting Regina lead the way.

Their first stop would be Granny and Red's cottage at some point within the next three days. As she rode, Emma had to wonder whether the silence between the pair of them would continue up until then. She wasn't annoyed at Regina – not really. But she wanted her to be the one to make the first move in attempting to set things right again: she needed _some_ kind of proof that Regina was trying to be reasonable. Their riding lesson the day before had suggested that it might not be too far off a hope, but now she wasn't quite as sure.

The thought of the lesson sent a sudden pain through her right shoulder, and she winced. She hadn't said anything, but the pain that she had felt when Regina had landed on top of her had only gotten progressively worse over the last twelve hours, and with every jar of her horse's footsteps she felt it vibrate through her gritted teeth. She had looked at the bruise that was spread across her back and shoulder with horror as she had gotten dressed that morning, biting down against the dull throbbing that reared up with every single movement. After struggling up onto her horse's back she quickly found that she could only grip onto the reins with her left hand, her right arm pressed against her stomach in a pathetic attempt to stop it from bouncing up and down. They had only been riding for half an hour when her back started to ache, and her shoulder began screaming at her. By lunchtime it was unbearable. She no longer felt the urge to speak to Regina because she knew without question that if she opened her mouth to say something, only a tearful moan would come out.

Regina, riding ahead of her companion, was oblivious to the tears cutting a path through her green eyes. Her own gaze was focused sharply ahead as she familiarised herself with the sensation of riding once more, feeling her horse's strong legs steadily beating along the track beneath her. She felt just as unstable as she imagined that Miss Swan currently looked. She recalled that distant time when she could sit herself on a horse and ride for hours without feeling a thing: now, she could already feel a dull ache setting in across her shoulders and through her legs after only a few hours. She knew that Emma couldn't be holding up much better. She wondered if now was the time to turn and speak to her, to show her that she was capable of being in some way pleasant company to ride with. She opened her mouth to casually remark about the journey, but quickly realised that she had nothing to say for herself. She didn't turn her head. She bit her lip and kept on riding with a strange pain beating at her chest.

It was only as the sun crawled to the height of the sky and Regina felt small beads of sweat beginning to gather along the dark line of her hair that she finally looked back at her companion. 'I think we should stop.'

Emma nodded, nearly crying with relief. 'Okay.' She immediately pulled at George's reins, guiding him over to a nearby clearing with her teeth gritted together. Regina turned her horse back and followed after her, for the first time that day noticing the strange line of Emma's spine underneath her cream-coloured jacket. She was holding herself rigidly to one side, only using her left arm to guide the horse. As they both came to a halt, Regina remained seated and watched Emma slipping down from her saddle: her face was hidden behind her tangled hair, but the involuntary gasp that escaped from her lips was sharp and apparent. Her feet thudded to the ground and she stood completely still for a moment, her head bowed against her horse's side. She took a deep breath. When she forced herself to look back up again she realised that Regina was still on her own horse, peering down at her with concern darkening her face.

'Miss Swan?' she asked. 'Are you alright?'

Emma eyes flickered as she forced a smile. 'Fine. Why?'

'Because I'm not an idiot, and you're clearly in pain.' Regina dismounted and tethered her horse to a nearby tree, turning back to her companion with narrowed eyes. 'What have you done to your shoulder?'

'It's fine, Regina, honestly.'

'With all due respect, Miss Swan, it's obviously not. How many times did you fall on it yesterday? You should have told me that you needed to stop.'

Emma simply shrugged, ignoring the excruciating pain that followed. 'Regina. I promise you – I'm okay.'

Not for the first time, Regina saw a glimmer of her son in Emma's sharp eyes. Her irritating stubbornness was a trait that was obviously hereditary and she found herself faltering as she saw Henry's own face before her for a moment. Eventually she was forced to nod her head.

'If you insist,' she sighed, removing her deep red jacket and running her hands through her hair. A tiny breeze shivering across her damp neck for just a second. 'We should eat, anyway. I'll get the food out.'

Emma began to struggle out of her own jacket as Regina unpacked the food that the servants had sent along with them. She watched Emma out of the corner of her eye: the effort that went into her resisting tears showed in every vein that protruded from her clammy temples. The moment that she was free of the jacket's tightly fitted fabric she flung it to the floor, leaving it laying in the dust as she sat herself down on a nearby log with her teeth gritted together. Now wearing only a loose white shirt, Regina caught a glimpse of purple from beneath its thin fabric. Her mind shot back to the previous night and the dusky bruise that Regina had seen poking out from underneath the shoulder of her dress, and she bit her lip. Slowly joining her on the makeshift bench, she handed her a parcel of food without saying a word. The silence continued as they began to eat.

It was Emma who chose to speak first, not looking up from her food. 'You know,' she said, 'even if we do manage to find Henry, we still need to find a way of getting him home again.'

Regina nodded in response, her face severe. 'I know. I've been thinking about that too.' She held a scrap of bread loosely between her fingers, twisting it from side to side. 'I think that Lake Nostos might be our best option, but it will be difficult. My mother could have done anything to it after you and Snow left so we'll have to be careful.'

'Do we have something to throw into it?' Emma asked, tearing off more bread with her teeth.

'Not at the moment,' Regina said thoughtfully. 'We'll have to work that out too. We can always go back to your parents' castle and collect some of the ashes from the wardrobe – that was how you got back, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' Emma replied, adjusting the position of her shoulder. The biting ache swiftly returned and she sucked in a breath through her teeth, struggling to conceal an agonised grimace. As she recomposed herself she looked back up at Regina, pretending that nothing had happened. 'That would add on another five days to our journey though. At least. And we don't know if there is even anything left of it.'

Regina, however, had stopped listening. Placing what was left of her lunch on the log beside her, she calmly stood up and set her hands on her hips.

'What?' Emma asked cautiously. Regina jutted her chin forwards, gesturing towards Emma's shirt.

'Take it off.'

'Excuse me?' Emma replied, blinking. Regina took a step towards her.

'I need to see your shoulder,' she said in a low voice. Emma simply shook her head, forcing a casual smile.

'Regina, honestly, it's fine—'

'Take your shirt off. Now,' Regina interrupted, moving around behind her and grabbing a fistful of fabric in her warm hands. Emma tried to turn and slap her away, ignoring the biting pain that shot through her nerves.

'Regina! Jesus!' she spluttered, missing her grip by an inch and feeling the loose fabric quickly rise up above her waist. Even turning her head to glare at her companion was agonising and suddenly she gasped, her left hand shooting up to grip at her shoulder. In that second Regina tugged the shirt up higher until the fabric was wedged underneath the sheriff's armpits, her arms trapped and her shoulders exposed to the queen's eyes.

She stared down at the enormous purple bruises that were spread across the majority of Emma's back with a sigh.

'Is that from when I fell on top of you?' Her voice was unusually quiet as she watched Emma's shoulders sag slightly.

'Yes,' she replied. 'But it's okay, Regina, honestly. It doesn't hurt that much.'

Regina snorted in response. She knelt down behind her, holding the shirt up with one hand. Emma sucked in her breath, wondering what she was doing, until she suddenly felt a warm palm pressing against the bruised flesh. She jumped.

'Emma,' Regina's voice came in a soft hum. 'It's really swollen.'

Emma remained silent. Regina moved her hand slowly across the tender skin, frowning at the purple smudges that were thriving beneath her palm. Her bottom lip was caught worriedly between her teeth as she felt the tightly knotted muscles beneath the pads of her fingers.

'Emma—'

'No,' Emma said. 'I know what you're going to say.'

'What?'

'You can't heal it.'

'Oh, for goodness sake. Why not?'

'I appreciate the offer, Regina, but we have one rule and you already broke it when you healed my forehead without my permission.'

'You're just being deliberately stubborn.'

'No, I'm being deliberately cautious. Besides, if I was in Storybrooke I would just have to deal with it, so I can do it here too. It's fine, Regina, I promise you.'

'This is ridiculous.'

'Well, you're just going to have to deal with that, aren't you.' There was no bite to her voice and Regina laughed in response. There was a pause. Regina's eyes remained sadly fixed on the bruises set out before her. Eventually Emma turned around to face her.

'Regina. Can I have my shirt back now?'

Regina blinked, letting go of the fabric and helping Emma to pull it back down again. As she stood back up, without thinking, she reached out a hand and gently rubbed her thumb against Emma's shoulder blade. Emma didn't respond, but she understood.

As Regina went back to what was left of her food, she tried not to watch Emma struggling to fully pull her shirt back about her. Emma's eyes too remained down, and eventually she was able to finish off her lunch. She dreaded the moment that she had to climb back on her horse, and it arrived all too quickly.

* * *

'Tell me about growing up here.'

They had been back on their horses for the last twenty minutes, neither one of them speaking: Emma had been focused on trying to minimise the pain in her swollen shoulder, while Regina had been forcing herself not to watch her as she did so. When Emma finally spoke, her words came out of the blue and surprised them both.

Regina turned back to look at her, frowning. 'What?'

She slowed down her horse so that Emma could catch up, her brow still furrowed in discomfort as she pulled up alongside her.

'Tell me about growing up here,' Emma repeated, tilting her head to one side. For a moment there was quiet, only the sound of the horses' hooves thudding against the ground echoing down the pathway. Eventually Regina cleared her throat.

'Why do you want to know?'

Emma wrinkled her nose in response. 'I'm curious.'

Regina noticed how closely she was being watched, Emma's green eyes scanning her face for a sign that she might snap. She had to wonder if this was some kind of test or not. If it was, she was determined to pass it: she proffered a tiny smile and gestured about her.

'I don't know what to say, Miss Swan. It was just… it was interesting. I suppose.'

'I figured,' Emma said slowly, one of her fingers absently playing with a strand of George's mane. 'It's just… you know, we both grew up alone, Regina. We have that in common.'

Regina looked up at the trees surrounding them for a moment, her lips pursing. Then she shrugged. 'But I didn't. Not exactly. It might have felt like it sometimes – a lot of the time, actually – but I think the main reason that my childhood was difficult was because… well, I was _never_ really alone. My mother was always, always there.'

'But there's a difference between being alone,' Emma said softly, 'and being lonely.'

Regina turned to look at her curiously. Emma was looking down again, her blonde curls falling forwards and partially obscuring the desperately sad look that had rested between her eyes.

'You're quite right,' Regina eventually replied. 'It is lonely not having any friends.'

'You didn't have any at all?'

'None my own age.' Regina took a deep breath, counting to five before releasing the words that she hadn't said to anyone in almost thirty years. 'Everyone stayed away. My mother wouldn't send me to school and so I didn't know any other children. The only time I would meet any was at parties or weddings or other events but even then people kept their distance. As it turns out, not many people want to be friends with the daughter of the wicked witch.'

Emma offered her a small smile. 'Was that their name for Cora?'

'Oh yes,' Regina laughed. 'And it was well-deserved, believe me.'

There was a long pause as Emma watched Regina's proud profile looking straight ahead, the tiniest frown carved in the lines about her mouth. Emma bit her lip, knowing what she needed to ask but afraid to. When she spoke her voice was so small that Regina could have been forgiven for pretending not to hear her.

'What did she do to you?'

When Regina's dark eyes slid over to her, Emma saw only terror there. Not from what Cora had done to her – but from what Emma could do with the knowledge of it. The queen's armour was being slowly beaten down, pulled away from her by the blonde woman's enquiring expressions and being left, piece by piece, in the dirt behind them. Regina wasn't sure that she had the energy to pick it all up again when things inevitably went wrong.

When she didn't reply, Emma spoke a bit louder. 'I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be nosy. It's just… I grew up in the foster system. I did have one nice family, but I have still met some Coras in my time. Believe me.'

Regina's chest was tight, her heart pounding in her ears, as she realised that Emma was trying to share something with her – she had been alone, truly alone, for most of her life; a fate that Regina of all people knew that she should be able to understand. And so she forced a breath into her lungs and replied to her, purposely not looking round.

'She wasn't violent,' she said slowly. 'Not always. She did hit me a few times but… but really, I think I preferred that to the times when she would hang me from the trees or just torment me with spells. She was… deranged. I don't think there's another word for it.' She sighed, rolling her eyes upwards for a moment. 'Power was the only thing that ever drove her and, without being queen, the only person she could truly exert power every day over was… was me.'

'And yet you still love her,' Emma said quietly. It wasn't a judgment.

'I try not to,' Regina replied. 'Because I really don't like her. But yes. I still love her.'

Emma smiled weakly. 'That must suck.'

'Yes. Well. It certainly has its downsides.'

Emma nodded in response, looking back down again at where her left hand was clinging onto George's reins. Regina watched her with her breath caught in her throat – she wasn't sure why she still felt so suspicious of her, but she nonetheless felt herself waiting for Emma to start laughing. She didn't. Emma was deep in thought, her forehead creased, not even looking round at her.

Regina swallowed. 'And what about you?'

The blonde woman immediately looked up, startled as if she had forgotten that anyone was even with her. 'What about me?'

'Tell me about how you grew up.' Regina had never asked such a personal question of her before – discounting times when she was being deliberately antagonising – and the words tasted strange on her tongue. Emma appeared equally confused as to how to respond.

'You don't want to know that.'

'Yes I do,' Regina replied. 'Come on, Miss Swan, we're comparing battle scars. I showed you mine.'

Emma laughed, rolling her eyes. Taking her hand off of the reins for a moment she absently rubbed a thumb over the side of her horse's neck, wetting her lips. Regina felt her own mouth go dry as she waited for a response, suddenly convinced that she had overstepped a mark that she hadn't even known existed. Never before had she shared so much with someone so unfamiliar, especially someone whom she could hardly say that she even liked. And never before had she given a damn, wanting such a person to share something in return, either.

'I had a family for three years,' Emma finally offered. Her voice was unusually flat. 'That… that didn't end especially well. Then I went back into the foster system and was there for… I had a couple of other houses for a bit, but nothing ever stuck. No one ever really wanted me, I guess.' She shrugged like this didn't bother her.

'But what was the foster system like?' Regina asked. 'I have little experience of it, I'm afraid.'

Emma opened her mouth to answer, and then promptly closed it again. Still looking down, she blinked a few times before speaking. 'Not so great.'

She didn't move to elaborate. Eventually Regina softly prompted her. 'Miss Swan?'

Emma's eyes slid over towards her, the same suspicion that Regina had felt only moments earlier glistening through them. Regina returned her gaze, steady and unblinking.

'They hated me,' Emma said bluntly. 'Everyone. I was too small for the other boys, too angry for the other girls, and too difficult for the people who ran the homes. In one place I shared a room with four other children and they would sneak up on me in the middle of the night and pinch me and sit on my chest so that I couldn't breath, and then when I screamed they'd run back to bed and tell the adults that I was having nightmares and keeping them all up.' The words were now coming from her mouth in an unrelenting torrent and she found that she couldn't stop herself from remembering all of the other incidents that no one – not one single person – had ever known about before now. 'I ran away from that place and ended up being moved when they caught me. In the next one the woman who managed everything – Martha. God, what a bitch. She used to laugh at how small I was and would lock me in one of the cupboards in the kitchen to prove it. When I started crying she would pull me out and just hit me until I couldn't stand. I ran from there too.'

'Did you get sent back?' Regina fought to keep her voice steady. Emma didn't look up at her.

'Yeah. And I was dragged across the back yard and spent that night locked in the garden shed.' Regina watched as she took a deep breath, her right hand suddenly shifting over to the underside of her left wrist. Her thumb managed to weave its way through the clump of bracelets that she always wore and gently stroked at the skin beneath them.

'I... I found a flower pot while I was in there,' she said quietly. 'It was empty and cracked all the way around, but I spent the night filling it with soil and found some seeds buried underneath a toolbox, and I planted them. I didn't even know what they were because it was so dark in there. But, as it turned out, they were snowdrops.'

Regina's eyebrows creased together for a moment.

'You know,' she offered gently, 'snowdrops can survive even the harshest winters.'

'I know,' Emma smiled to herself. 'They survived with me in my bedroom for a long time. I told myself… it was stupid. But I told myself that as long as they could survive, then so could I.'

Silence fell. Regina's heart plummeted. 'What happened?'

Emma's thumb continued to rub across the hidden skin of her wrist. 'Another kid found the pot. Threw it out of the window. Martha called on me for stealing it and I ran away again.'

Regina swallowed, watching as Emma quickly scrubbed a hand underneath her eyes. 'People are more resilient than flowers, Miss Swan.' She longed to reach out to her, to touch her arm and let her know that it was okay. 'Because you did survive.'

Emma looked over at her, her eyes glassy. 'I know,' she said quietly. She held up her left hand so that Regina could see the spot where she'd been rubbing, the slightly pink skin scarred by the thick lines of her grubby bracelets. Regina blinked as she suddenly spotted the thin petals of a flower that were inked beneath them, something that she had never noticed before. Emma's face creased, offering her a tiny smile.

'But then again, so did the flower.'


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

'I don't know what annoys me more,' Red threw her arms in the air as she spoke, her voice getting progressively louder. 'The fact that you decided to throw away any regards for your own safety by sneaking off to meet that man. Or the fact that you thought that I _wouldn't notice_.'

'I said I was sorry.' Henry sat on the edge of his bed, looking miserably down at his shoes.

'For what? For putting all of us in danger, or for getting caught doing it?'

'Ruby, I'm _sorry_,' Henry snapped. 'Why is this such a big deal? Robert's nice. He taught me how to shoot and he says that—'

'I don't give a damn what he says, Henry,' Red spat out. 'It doesn't _matter _what he said, because you are going to forget that you ever met him and you are never going to see him again. Jesus, kid – whatever made you think this was a good idea? I thought you were supposed to be smart.'

Henry glowered up at her, his teeth gritted together. He didn't respond.

Red sighed, leaning back against the door frame. She took a deep breath before she spoke again. 'Henry. Look – I was just worried. What did you expect to happen? I would come in to check on you, find that your bed was empty, and I'd just shrug it off and wait until morning to see if you'd been ripped apart by ogres?'

Henry looked back down at his hands, clenched tightly together in his lap. 'No. I just didn't think you'd check on me at all.'

'Of course I'm going to check on you, kiddo,' she said sadly. 'I'm looking after you until your moms get here, remember. Whether you like it or not, I'm taking care of you now. And seeing you sneaking back through the window at midnight with a bow and arrow strapped to your back tells me that I am _not _doing a very good job of it so far.'

'I've only been here two days,' Henry shrugged slightly. 'You're doing pretty well so far.'

'Am I?' Red sighed. 'Because you're not acting like it.'

The bright midday sunlight was streaming through the open window, casting a shadow across Henry's face. She waited for him to reply. When he didn't, she sighed once more and turned away from him, moving towards the door.

'You'd better stay in here for now,' she sighed, pulling the door handle towards her. 'Granny is still furious. I'll come back and check on you in a little while, okay? We can talk more later.'

The moment the door had shut behind her Henry threw himself face first onto his bed, scrunching his eyes shut to stop himself from crying. He knew, of course, that he'd been stupid to meet Robert. He also knew that if he'd pulled the same stunt with either of his mothers they would have reacted even more aggressively – but it would have been different. They would have been so angry because they were scared for him, not because they thought he was completely stupid. Slowly, as the days wore on, he was beginning to realise just how much he was missing them both. Hot tears streamed down his face as he pushed the thought back, hating them, utterly despising them, and yet wishing that they were both there with him so they could take him away once more.

He somehow must have slept, because the next thing he knew was that he was being jolted awake by a faint tapping sound. His eyes snapped open. Assuming the noise was coming from the wooden door, he sat up, rubbing at his face.

'Come in,' he said. No one appeared. He frowned, stepping forwards to open the door himself, when the noise came again from behind him.

Robert stood outside the window, casually leaning against the chipped windowsill. He looked down at his dirty fingernails as Henry hesitantly approached.

'Bad night?' was all he said. Henry shrugged.

'How did you find me?'

'Followed you back last night. Wanted to make sure you were okay.' He looked up, startling Henry with the blackness of his eyes. 'Obviously though, you're not.'

'I'm fine,' Henry replied, scrubbing a hand across his still-damp cheek. 'What are you doing here?'

Robert simply held up a single, silver arrow. Henry's eyes automatically clamped onto it, noticing in the fresh daylight that the very air around it seemed to quiver. Like a tarmac road on a burning hot day, streams of confused air billowed out from around its tarnished metal sides. He blinked.

'Feel like another lesson?'

Henry thought about Ruby, who would no doubt come back soon and find him missing. He knew that she'd be furious. He thought back to their argument, however, and what she'd said to him – _I thought you were supposed to be smart_.

_Well, I am smart_, he thought to himself. He bent down to pick up his own bow, tightening his fingers around its cool wooden frame. _Smart enough to be able to learn how to do this_.

He quickly scrawled a note – 'Gone for a walk' – that he knew she wouldn't believe and clambered out of the window. Robert led him to the same spot as the night before in complete silence, his enormous frame casting shadows across the ragged lawn of the dwarves' cottage.

It took a few shots for Henry's tired arms to remember what they were doing again, but it didn't take long for him to realise that, in the daylight, he was even better at this that he had previously thought. His arrows hit target after target, reaching further and further away. Even Robert looked vaguely impressed this time and began to join in – not aiming at the wooden targets, however, but focusing instead on the surrounding wildlife.

Henry watched him shoot. Aiming calmly at a squirrel perched in a distant tree, surely too far away for his arrow to reach, he released the piece of silver with his eyes half-closed. They both watched as it cut through the air. Henry thought that he saw it twist slightly, changing its dead straight track at the very last moment before it struck the startled squirrel dead through its heart. This happened again and again, the arrow bending ever so slightly no matter where Robert aimed. Each time, it struck the target's chest with an unnerving certainty. Robert collected each of the carcasses with an expressionless face, tearing the bloodied arrows free and cleaning them off on his shirt. Henry watched him curiously, his bow and arrow no longer poised for shooting.

'You okay, boy?' Robert asked, feeling the suspicious gaze on the back of his head. Henry blinked, clutching an arrow tightly to his chest.

'How do you always managed to hit them like that?' he asked slowly. Robert laughed, shrugging.

'I'm a bit older than you, Henry,' he replied. 'I've had a lot more practice. You'll get there too.'

'No,' Henry shook his head, gesturing towards the silver arrows. 'That's not what I meant. I mean, when you shoot, they don't fly straight. How do you get them to bend the way you want them?'

Robert's arm froze for a moment, his dark gaze fixed firmly on the young boy's inquisitive face. When he saw no hint of a challenge there, he allowed himself to straighten up again, laughing.

'Like I said – practice.'

'Do you practice on these targets?' Henry asked, gesturing towards one of the smaller ones that hadn't seemed to have a scratch on it before he had arrived. Robert's eyebrows grew closer together.

'Sometimes.'

'I've only ever seen you hit animals.'

'Animals are more useful than pieces of wood,' he snapped. 'I need to eat, you know.'

The boy fell into silence, looking down at his feet. Robert waited for a moment, then sighed. He took three short steps over to the boy and knelt down before him, clamping a slightly bloody hand over his shoulder.

'Henry. Here's something that you need to know.' He spoke slowly, his eyes level. 'People are always going to tell you to never make a deal with the devil.'

As he spoke he pulled one of his arrows from the quiver, holding it up between his face and Henry's with a flourish. Henry looked down at it, watching as the bright silver pushed the surrounding air away from it. He swallowed, looking back into Robert's dark gaze.

'But _I_,' he continued, his voice low. 'I am here to tell you that sometimes – sometimes it's worth it.'

* * *

As night began to fall, the silent frames of Regina and Emma continued to slowly trudge through the densely packed trees of the surrounding forest. The repetitive sound of the horses' hooves hitting the dirt beneath her was beginning to make Emma's head hurt. Teaming this throbbing in her temples with the screaming ache that shot through her upper back any time she moved, she was almost ready to drop from the horse's back and run. A few metres ahead of her, Regina didn't seem to be faring any better: her usually rigid shoulders had gradually begun to slump forwards, the lines around her mouth deepening. As the two horses struggled over yet another rocky hill amongst the trees, Emma let out a loud sigh. Regina turned to face her.

'Miss Swan?'

'Can we stop?' The words burst out of her. 'Please?'

'I would love to,' Regina said. 'But the ground is terrible here. There's nowhere to camp.'

'I realise that,' Emma said, struggling to keep the snap from her voice. 'But I'm exhausted. Right now, I could sleep anywhere.'

'Emma, I assure you, we can't—'

'Regina, I swear to _God_, if we don't stop within the next two minutes I will throw myself from this horse and you'll have to explain to our son why he's suddenly only got one mom left.' Regina jumped at the sudden shout of her voice. Even from their distance Emma's eyes were violently green in the fading light, and Regina was forced to sigh in response.

'Fine,' she groaned. 'Prepare for the worst night's sleep you've ever had. Please don't complain in the morning when your shoulder is twice the size it is now.'

Emma muttered something unintelligible under her breath, following Regina as she led them over to the closest patch of ground that wasn't entirely covered in logs and boulders. There might be enough room for one tent to be pitched on flat ground –as she struggled down from her horse's back, Emma looked about her and wondered whether Regina would accept a coin toss as the proper way of deciding who would be the lucky one of the pair.

Once the horses had been tethered and given food, the tents were dragged free of the tightly packed bags and spread out flat across the ground. Regina stood and stared down at them for a moment. The ridiculous reality struck her in one quick flash: she had no idea how to pitch a tent.

'Well,' she said after a moment. 'These look slightly different to the ones on the Walmart website.'

They were essentially large sheets of some kind of silk with holes in each corner – no poles, no pegs, and with only a few stray bits of rope wrapped around them. Regina frowned down at them, wondering which of her servants required firing immediately for being too incompetent to pack the correct items.

'This is supposedly what they look like in this world,' Emma sighed, remembering the many sleepless nights that she had had underneath something similar to this only a few weeks before. 'The material is supposed to be the best because it's really light, but also waterproof.' She knelt down, picking up a corner of the material and moaning. 'Other than that though, they pretty much suck.'

'Do they keep the cold out?' Regina asked hopefully.

'Not really.'

'What about insects?'

'Nope.' Emma forced a smile. 'Basically you throw it over a low branch and tie the two sides down somewhere near the floor. Anything can get in or out, but at least if it rains we should only get really soaked if the wind starts blowing the water in.'

Regina didn't say a word in response. She stood still with her hands thrust into the pockets of her jacket, watching as Emma grabbed the nearest sheet and tossed it over an appropriate branch. Her teeth were gritted from the pain of that small movement, but she forced herself to keep moving. After tying the whole structure down she stood upright with a loud sigh, gripping at her aching shoulder with her eyes shut. When she opened them again, Regina was stood in the exact same spot, looking worriedly down at the floor.

'Are you okay?' Emma asked, her voice flat and expressionless.

'Yes,' Regina replied, crossing her arms. 'Fine. I just… I'm not sure how to…'

Emma rolled her eyes, her patience already gone. 'I'll do it. Just get a fire started, will you? It's already getting cold.'

Regina nodded immediately, backing away as Emma aggressively grabbed hold of the second sheet and began to look for another spot where it could be pitched. Trying to remember whatever her father had taught her about lighting fires in the castle's hearth when she was a small child, Regina began to gather up small pieces of dry wood from the surrounding area. Behind her she could hear Emma swearing under her breath, struggling with the large sheet and constantly stumbling over rocks as she moved about in the darkness. When Regina returned to their makeshift camp the second tent was just about pitched – Emma, however, was now sat on the floor rather than crouching, tying a knot in the rope with tears running down her cheeks.

'Miss Swan,' Regina slowly said, trying to keep her voice low. 'What's—'

'I'm in pain, Regina,' Emma snapped. 'I can't stand and I'm exhausted and I'm starving, so will you _please _make that fire?'

Regina blinked, startled. With her teeth gritted together she crouched down a few metres away from the tents, piling up the branches in between two stumps of wood that would serve as seats for them. She heard Emma struggle back to her feet from somewhere behind her, shuffling over to the supply packs and rummaging around inside for the blankets that the servants had sent along with them. Regina glanced over her shoulder as she set up the fire, watching as Emma spread each of the blankets out between the two structures. For a moment Regina thought that it looked like she was putting all of the thicker ones in one tent, and all of the thinner ones in the other. But then Emma dragged her feet over to the first tent – the one that appeared to have the thin sheets inside it – and threw herself down on the floor inside, so she must have been mistaken. Regina retrieved the flint and steel from the floor and stared down at the pile of wood before her, trying to remember what to do next.

Ten minutes later, when there was still no sign of a fire, Emma stuck her head back out of her tent. She had changed her riding trousers for something looser, closely resembling what she imagined fairy tale pyjamas to look like, and had put on her old white tank top underneath her loose shirt, her riding jacket and red scarf thrown on top. She watched the confusion on Regina's face and sighed to herself, grabbing the nearest blanket and wrapping it around herself. Regina jumped when she realised that the blonde woman was suddenly crouched next to her.

'Sorry,' she said, shaking her head down at her failed attempts to light anything. 'It's been a while… Without magic, I find it hard to…'

'Go and put something warmer on,' Emma said, gently prising the flint from her fingers and nudging her. 'And bring some food over. I'm starving.'

Regina quickly jumped up and went over to her own tent, examining its contents: the floor was covered in thick and probably itchy blankets, and her bag of personal supplies was leant up against the neighbouring tree trunk. She knelt down, feeling the furnishings between her fingers – they did all seem thick, thicker than the one that Emma was currently wearing. She longed to go over to the second tent and compare those blankets to hers, but the fire was almost lit and she knew that soon Emma would turn around and see her. Instead she sighed, clambering into the tent in order to change out of her leather riding pants and pull some other, warmer clothes on. She returned to the fire a few moments later, the bag of food clutched in her arms.

'Thank you,' she said as she sat down, gesturing towards the blaze. Emma was leaning into it, her eyes closed but her face otherwise bright from its warmth.

'That's okay,' she replied, not opening her eyes. She took a deep breath, however, and sighed. 'I'm sorry for snapping at you.'

Regina smiled to herself. 'That's okay. It does seem that we have a tendency to do that to one another.'

Emma laughed, finally opening her eyes again. 'It seems that we do.'

Regina thrust her hands into the bag of supplies and began to pull their dinner out. The servants had packed enough food for two full meals, plus extra bread and fruit for the next few days. This meal would be the last of the cold meat, however, and Regina sighed, knowing that they would be forced to start hunting soon.

She handed over half of the supply to Emma who began unwrapping it immediately, shoving an apple into her mouth and holding it there between her teeth while her fingers pulled apart her chunk of bread. Regina tried not to laugh, focusing instead on continuing to go through the bag in order to see what they had left for the rest of their journey. It was only when her hand met something that felt like glass that she paused.

'Ah ha,' she said, pulling two bottles free of the scratchy fabric. Emma looked up with wide eyes, tearing the apple out from between her teeth.

'Wine?!' she demanded from behind a mouthful of food. Regina smiled wickedly, tossing her one.

'I knew I hired those servants for a reason.'

Both bottles were swiftly opened and the two women settled down, their backs resting against the stumps of wood and their laps full of food. The meal itself was consumed at a breakneck speed – the wine, however, was drunk blissfully slowly, both women silent as they watched the fire crackling before them. After a few minutes Emma leaned her head back against the tree stump and closed her eyes. Regina turned to look at her for a moment, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath her blanket. She noticed the dark scar of purple that was again peeking out from underneath the shoulder of her shirt. Biting her lip, she turned away once more, taking another drink of wine and allowing the heavy liquid to fill her whole body with warmth.

'I miss him,' Emma suddenly said, her eyes no longer closed but gazing up at the smoky sky.

'Who?' Regina asked, although she knew. Emma dragged her eyes over to her.

'Henry,' she said gently. 'Who else?'

Regina nodded. 'Yes. I do, too.'

Emma took another drink of wine, breathing in the thick air through her nose. 'I went ten years without him,' she said slowly, licking the liquid from her lips. 'Ten years, not knowing what there was to miss. And now suddenly I'm away from him for two days, and…'

Her sentence disappeared into the air as she shook her head to herself. Regina watched her with a frown, feeling a familiar ache deep in her chest.

'I know.' It was all that she could say.

Emma suddenly pushed herself off of the tree stump so that she could turn her whole body towards Regina, sitting cross-legged in the dirt with the bottle of wine clamped between her hands.

'Is this what I did to you?' she asked, her forehead creasing. 'When he brought me to Storybrooke, and he kept running away to spend time with me. When he came to live with me. Is this… is this what it felt like?'

Regina's face was expressionless as she answered. 'It was probably worse, Miss Swan. Because I'd spent those ten years with him, and so I knew _exactly _what there was to miss.'

Emma just nodded, looking down at the bottle with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her blonde hair looked almost golden in the light of the fire and Regina found it inexplicably difficult to be angry at her all of a sudden – in that moment she could only see the small child who had been locked in the garden shed, cuddling a broken plant pot for comfort.

Eventually Emma's green eyes lifted back up again and she sighed. 'I'm sorry, Regina,' she said, shaking her head. 'I never… I didn't _mean_ to hurt you. Really. I never even thought about it. He just… he showed up, and he wanted me. And I wanted to make sure he was okay. That was all.'

'But now you love him,' Regina said simply, the hurt still crackling beneath her voice. 'You love him like I do.'

'Maybe,' Emma said quietly. 'But then again, maybe not quite as much. You've fought for him for longer than I have.'

Regina's chest immediately loosened as she heard Henry's birth mother finally admitting those words. The heavy red wine clouded her head for a moment, and she heard herself speaking words that she had not even thought about saying.

'Why _did_ you give him up?'

Emma's head shot up, her eyes wide. 'Sorry?'

'Henry.' Regina looked directly at her, her gaze calm but questioning. 'How… how could you not want him?'

Emma quickly realised that this wasn't an accusation, but a genuine struggle to understand. She now knew the boy that Regina knew – that smart, funny, heart breaking little boy who had somehow wormed his way into her life without her permission. She couldn't blame her for not understanding why anyone would want to send him away again.

'It's hard to explain. I mean… even how I found out that I was pregnant with him…' she said slowly, tipping the bottle back and forth in her hand, watching the dark liquid rising and falling against each side of the glass. 'It was all… complicated.'

'You were in prison,' Regina clarified.

'Yes,' Emma replied. 'But that wasn't all. I was… young. Really young. And I'd just had my heart broken and I was angry at the whole world. The last thing I wanted was there to be a permanent reminder of that following me around when I came out again.'

She looked up at Regina, whose head was now leant back against the dead tree, her soft eyes watching her. Emma sighed once more and took another long drink of wine. She then proceeded to tell her the story of Henry's father.

'I thought I'd hit rock bottom when I ended up in prison,' she said, fifteen minutes and half a bottle of wine later. 'Even after Neal had broken my heart, I really thought that that was the lowest moment of my entire life. I was so wrong, though – having to ask one of those bitchy prison guards to go out and get me a pregnancy test because I'd just missed my fourth period topped that off pretty nicely.'

Regina was still quiet, imagining a seventeen year-old Emma sat alone and heart broken in a jail cell with her pregnant belly swelling out from underneath her shirt. She took another tentative sip of wine, not saying a word.

'Part of me wanted to keep him though,' Emma continued, quickly rubbing a finger below her left eye. 'A big part. I thought to myself that _this _would be the making of me – the thing that would prove to me and to everyone else that I could be a grown up, I could do a good thing and take care of someone who needed me. He would be a little reminder of how something good can come out of something so utterly shitty. Some days I would wake up and feel him kicking inside of me, and I'd actually get excited about one day getting to meet him.' She smiled to herself, before looking down at her now flat, empty stomach. Regina watched her flinch.

'But then…' she continued, her voice slowing down. 'Then one day I looked in the mirror, and I saw what everyone else saw: a scared little girl. A girl who had never even been able to look after herself before, let alone anyone else. Neal and I hadn't even managed to find a home with walls to live in before things had gone wrong, and panic suddenly slapped me straight in the face because I suddenly realised that I knew who I truly was – I was a child and a liability and a complete and utter mess. I couldn't drag a baby into that. I'd be an even worse person than I gave myself credit for if I ruined a child's life as well as my own.

'The day he was born… I didn't cry. Not through the whole of labour. He came out of me with the same dark hair that he's got now and they let me hold him, and even then I didn't cry. They had to leave two guards in the room with me to make sure that I didn't strangle him or something and so I just held him to me and whispered how sorry I was, how much I hated myself for doing this to him and how much someone else would be able to love him when I couldn't.'

She looked up at Regina, whose eyes were wide and dark and full of sadness as she listened.

'I was right about that, at least.'

'Emma,' Regina said thickly, running a hand through her hair. 'I didn't know. I just assumed—'

'I know,' Emma said gently, a smile on her sad lips. 'Everyone does. The truth is though, Regina, that I did do the right thing – I gave him the chance to be raised properly. He was brought up by someone who loved him with an unimaginable fierceness every day of his life, and…' She faltered, looking down at her hands. 'And I've never actually thanked you for that. For loving him.'

Regina smiled, shaking her head. She was suddenly filled with a deep, drowning warmth that hadn't come from the wine. 'It's quite alright, Miss Swan. Like I could possibly have done anything else.'

The woods fell quiet once more as the women stopped talking, looking down at their half-empty bottles with wretched smiles. Emma felt a strange aching in her chest – one that half came from how much she was missing her son, and half from the relief of knowing that at least one other person now understood how she could justify that.

Ten minutes of silence passed before the fire started to die out. Regina looked up at the clear sky, feeling a chill sweep under her woollen blanket, and she forced the cork back into her bottle of wine. Emma nodded with understanding.

'I'm exhausted,' she said with a sigh, stoppering her own bottle and forcing herself to stand up. Regina held out a hand to help her, and the two women returned to their tents with the blankets wrapped about their swaying bodies.

'Well then,' Regina said, smiling coolly. 'Goodnight, I suppose. Try to get some sleep for tomorrow.'

'I will,' Emma nodded. 'You too.'

They separated into their own tents, quietly pulling the blankets about them and settling down in order to get some rest.

Regina, however, found herself still laying wide awake an hour later, staring up at the dark roof of her tent with a frown etched across her forehead. Wrapped up thickly amongst four different blankets, she found that she wasn't as cold as she'd expected. And yet the sharp breeze was bothering her all the same: she turned over onto her stomach and lifted herself up onto her elbows, peering out into the darkness in order to try and catch a glimpse of the woman whom she knew must be bitterly and painfully cold.

It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She lay in the same position for the next few minutes, squinting out into the clearing with her jaw pressed into the folded up jacket that was serving her as a pillow. She could see the mouth of her companion's tent, but nothing inside it. She bit at her lip, gripping her blankets more tightly: she _knew _that Emma had given her the thicker ones. She had obviously felt guilty for snapping at her, guilty for forcing her to camp in this terrible location with no patience for the fact that the queen of this land had no experience whatsoever of tents or fires or hunting, and her way of making up for it was ensuring that she at least got a restful sleep. But it had backfired, as now Regina was all too awake, focusing her energy entirely on worrying over what Emma Swan was suffering from in the next tent over.

After another five minutes she still couldn't see anything, and the fretting began to irritate her. She rummaged around in the tent, grabbing hold of the thickest blanket that she had to hand, and quietly stood up with it bundled up in her arms. The moment she stepped out into the clearing she felt the bite of the wind against her cheeks and flinched, slightly regretting not sacrificing one of her thinner sheets instead. She forced herself to keep moving forwards nonetheless, her eyes on the entrance to the next tent. She gradually began to make out the lonely form of Emma Swan, shaking as she laid curled up in a ball on her side, with tears squeezing out from underneath her eyelids.

The queen knelt down next to her without a word, tucking the fabric about her like she had done so many times with their son. The green eyes snapped open immediately, looking up at her but unable to make out her features in the darkness. Regina bit her lip and pressed the last corner of the fabric against Emma's shivering frame, before slowly standing up once more. Before she had even turned away from the tent she heard a voice from beneath her.

'Wait,' Emma said, sitting up with the traces of tears still clinging onto her eyelashes. 'Regina. Please don't leave me over here.'

Regina looked down at her. Her blonde curls hung in a tangled mess down her back, her green eyes glistening above her pale cheeks. She could see her lips trembling, but from the cold or desperation she couldn't tell. With a sigh she suddenly turned away, walking back to her own tent with her teeth gritted and her fists clenched by her sides. She didn't look back as she went.

Emma lay back down again, quaking with embarrassment, curling herself back up into a tight ball and pressing her hand across her face. It was only when she heard footsteps returning that she allowed herself to peer out from between her fingers once more.

Regina had two more blankets in her arms, which she promptly threw down across the woman laying beneath her. There was an awkward pause as she looked down at the cramped tent, wondering how to manoeuvre herself. She heard a tiny sniff, and then Emma pushed herself to one side of the tent, releasing the blankets from about her and providing enough room for Regina to join her.

She slipped into the tent and covered her now icy body with the dozen layers of fabric, trying not to breath too loudly. Emma lay rigidly beside her. The tent slowly grew warmer, filled with the faint, clinging scent of vanilla and the sound of Emma shuffling down beneath the blankets. On her side, facing away from Regina, only the queen's arm made contact with her back as she forced herself to lie completely still. As the biting cold left her, exhaustion took over and she soon fell into a silent sleep.

Next to her, staring up at the roof of the tiny tent, Regina still lay awake. She could hear Emma's soft breaths and felt the warmth of her tightly coiled body against her side. She turned her head for a moment, looking at the blonde curls that lay tangled on the ground between them. The smell of vanilla was stronger there. She breathed it in before shaking her head to herself, rolling over onto her side with her back to the other woman. With her hands pressed beneath her cool cheek, she told herself to sleep. She told herself that she was exhausted. She told herself that Emma was no longer awake and so she could get up and go back to her own tent whenever she wanted – and yet neither movement, nor sleep, seemed to come to her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

Robert accepted the bottle of ale that was held out to him, drinking half of its contents in one swig before flopping his body down onto the floor of the forest. Eight other men sat in a circle around the enormous fire, a tower of smoke billowing up and slipping through the thick canopy of the surrounding trees. The sky was clear, and the midnight air was bitterly cold. Robert took another sip of his ale, leaning back against a heavyset tree with his bow by his side. His kills from earlier on in the day were still roasting above the flames and every man there was starving for them. Robert closed his eyes for a moment, the glass bottle dangling between two of his stocky fingers.

From his left side came a loud laugh. 'Tired, Robert?' He opened his eyes and saw that it was John – of course it was John – who was bellowing across the clearing at him. 'Has chasing that boy around become too exhausting for you?'

Robert rolled his eyes, replying with a sigh, 'It's never too exhausting to claim a prize, John.'

'So you keep saying,' another man said from the other side of the fire. 'I still don't see why he's such a catch, though. He can shoot – so fucking what.'

'If you had been listening,' Robert said, sitting more upright against the tree, 'you would know that it's not just the fact that he can shoot. It's that he can shoot _because _of who his family are.'

'Yeah, right,' the same man rolled his eyes. 'The grandson of Snow White and Prince Charming. Son of their daughter, adopted by the Evil Queen, all of that. I still don't see why any of us should give a damn.'

Robert stood up quicker than any of the eight sets of eyes could follow him, and suddenly he was on the other side of the flames. His right hand was wrapped around the collar of the man's shirt, while in his left one of his precious arrows was grasped, its razor-sharp point digging against the man's throat. Robert's dark eyes looked down at him with a calmness that slapped every man there into silence.

'Arthur. You need to learn how to _think_.' His voice hummed through the trees, so low that it was almost swallowed up by the crackling of the flames. 'The boy has at least four people who will soon come looking for it. Four people whom are all in some way known in this land – that means four hearts that we will be paid _generously _for should we manage to capture them.'

Arthur shook his head, feeling the sharp pinch of Robert's arrow twisting against his flesh as he did so. 'Why would anyone back at the safe haven want their hearts, Robert? Lancelot is—'

'Gone. I know.' Robert suddenly let go of the smaller man and stood upright once more, scanning the circle of watching companions with eyes that didn't reflect the fire. 'But the other ones who are left – they're angry. They're always angry. We may be able to come out here and hunt for them and raid old houses for all kinds of shit that can keep them alive… but they're still trapped, and they're full of hatred because of it. If we brought them the heart of Snow White or, even better, Regina – how much do you think they would pay us for the pleasure of inflicting some pain on _that_?'

From across the circle another voice nervously asked, 'Does that mean no more stealing? No more hunting?'

'No more anything,' Robert looked across at him with a faint smile. 'No more getting paid with a single whore for an entire deer, or rummaging around on our knees in the undergrowth for shit like this.' Out of his pocket he pulled a tiny, black object – once full of life and magic, it now lay withered in his palm. Useless, dried up and dead, like the rest of the world that they stood in. The circle of men watched as Robert held the bean up to the firelight and wrinkled his nose in disgust, pushing it back into his pocket after only a moment. 'We can get out of this land. Find somewhere new to travel, new people to trade with.'

'Like you could ever want to trade for anything anymore, Robin,' John laughed. Robert turned his head with a snap as he heard the mention of his old name – his real name – and John quickly fell silent once more. That silence spread back across the circle. Robert rolled his eyes, sitting himself back down in his spot against the large tree and drinking the rest of his beer.

'Have you still not heard anything?' John spoke after a few minutes, his voice small. 'About Marian?'

Robert slowly cast his gaze back across the circle towards his oldest friend. Little John had been the only person there with him when that strange man had appeared amongst the trees all those years ago, wanting to strike a deal with him: he had witnessed Robin's terrible hunting that day, his on-going inability to hit a single target, and had produced the very bow and arrows that lay by his side now. All he had asked for in exchange was a woman from his village to replace the maid whom he had recently lost from his castle. Robert had greedily accepted, taking hold of the darkly cursed bow and feeling the power running out of its heavy frame and up into his own veins. Only when it was too late did he realise which woman it was that the Dark One had chosen to take away from him.

'No,' Robert said in response, snapping his fingers at the nearest man until another ale was passed to him. 'She's gone. I got what I wanted, remember. So did we all.'

A silence followed. The silver arrows still glowed even in the pitching darkness, and every man forced themselves not to look over at them.

'So, the boy,' Arthur finally spoke up once more. 'What are you going to do with him now?'

A smile returned to Robert's face, twisting his lips upwards into a cruel grimace. 'All I need to do now is keep him close,' he said in a low voice. 'He trusts me. I've taught him to be good at something, and he won't want to stop learning it. If I spend as much time as possible with him, then when someone from his family shows up I'll be there waiting for them. We all will.'

A chorus of murmurs and nods passed around the group.

'What do you need us to do?'

'Be patient,' Robert replied, picking up an arrow and running a thick finger over the tip of it. 'And then I can strike the deal that will finally solve all of our problems. We'll get the heart we need, and then we can be gone. Finally we can be a band of truly merry men after all.'

* * *

A tickling sensation against the tip of Emma's nose woke her up early the next morning. She groaned to herself, trying to stretch out and quickly realising that her injured arm was thrown across a heap of bags or blankets, her shoulder locked into place by the exhausted muscles. Opening her eyes, she tried and failed to lift it free. It was half a second later when she realised that the soft mound pressed against her stomach was in fact a fast asleep Regina, and her shoulder promptly unlocked as she clapped her hand across her mouth, stopping herself from screaming.

Leaning on her left arm, she managed to sit herself up without dislodging Regina's position. The faint taste of red wine still lingered on her tongue and she forced herself to think back to what had happened the night before – what had she done? How the _hell_ had the Evil Queen ended up as her little spoon in her tent?

The memory of talking about Henry came crawling back to her. And about Neal. Oh Jesus Christ – she pulled a blanket up to her chest and groaned to herself, her hand pressed across her eyes. She had told Regina about having her heart broken by him.

And yet… she couldn't remember Regina laughing at her, or even pitying her. Maybe she had been drunker than she'd realised but for some reason all she could picture in her mind's eye was the face of Regina watching her, full of concern and something else that closely resembled understanding. Emma pulled her hand away from her eyes and looked down at the woman sleeping beside her. The woman who had crawled into her tent to keep her company because she knew that she was freezing, and hurting, and lonely.

She reached a hand over towards her. Regina's head was turned away from her, half-covered with her messy dark hair, and sleepily silent. Emma's fingers flicked at a few locks until she could see the queen's face more clearly, watching her dark lips that were pursed naturally in her sleep and the sweeping lashes that were resting gently on the upper curves of her cheeks. She remained asleep, but wriggled slightly as Emma's touch grazed against her ear. Emma watched her for only a few moments longer, eventually feeling a dull, sad pain in her chest that began to overwhelm her, before she tucked her own blanket around the sleeping woman and made her way out of the tent.

The air outside was hazy and grey, and it was obviously still early. Emma shivered, reaching back into the tent for her riding jacket and slipping it on over yesterday's clothes. She began to walk across the clearing, sitting herself down on the stump of wood that she had been leaning back against the night before and closing her eyes. A faint smell of smoke still radiated from the burned-out fire and she breathed it in, listening to the sounds of the forest waking up around her. It was surprisingly quiet. Only a few birds were making any noise, and she found herself growing concerned – she knew that they would have to start hunting for their food today. The servants had packed them several knives and a bow and arrow to allow them to do this, but if there weren't any animals left to hunt… then their forward-thinking would have been entirely pointless.

Emma rubbed her stiff hands together, yawning as she warmed them up. After a moment she pushed them into the pockets of her jacket. She felt the knuckles of her right hand hit against something solid and she jumped, wrapping her fingers around the object there and pulling it out. Looking down at the cell phone that she had forgotten she'd even brought with her, she sighed loudly and watched as the screen lit up. _No service_, it told her. _No messages_.

She held the phone loosely in her hand, its battery almost empty. A blurred photograph of her and Henry, taken one day by Mary Margaret without her noticing, stared back at her from the screen. It had been her screensaver for months now, and yet this was the first time that she had looked at it properly, noticing how Henry shared so many of her features – her slightly squinted eyes when she laughed, the creases in her forehead when she was thinking. That boy was running about somewhere in the very same forest that she found herself trapped in, and just the sight of his face looking up at her brought about a sudden sharpness to the backs of her eyes. She swallowed, blindly bringing up the keypad and tapping in a familiar number.

_Calling – Mary Margaret_.

The phone barely bothered to dial it before informing her once again that she had no service. The useless piece of plastic flew through the air and shattered against a nearby tree a second later, its mechanical insides spraying across the forest floor. Emma leaned forwards in her seat, her head pressed into her hands, waiting for the sharp threat of tears to subside. With her eyes tightly shut and her brain focusing entirely on taking deep, stilted breaths, she didn't hear the rustling of leaves from behind her.

'Miss Swan?'

Emma didn't adjust her position, internally screaming to be left alone. Half a dozen paces behind her Regina stood at the mouth of the tent, her dark hair tangled about her head and her hand rubbing tiredly at her eyes. She had heard the crack of plastic through the dull haze of sleep and had found herself outside the tent without truly thinking about what she was doing.

At the back of her mind was the vague memory of a lock of blonde hair tickling her shoulder while she slept – and then she had woken up in Emma Swan's tent. Thick confusion clouded her sleepy eyes and she too had to wonder whether she had drunk more wine than she'd realised last night, because she could still feel the weight of Emma's arm across her side. She had woken up in the middle of the night with it there, with the younger woman's body pressed warmly against her back, and she hadn't done anything to move her. She had simply gone back to sleep and woken up five hours later to the sound of shattering plastic.

Now she cautiously approached her, her hands running through her messy hair as she tried to flatten down the bed-headed peaks. The black shirt that she had been wearing the day before was creased all over and she felt fairly certain that half of the buttons were done up wrong, but she didn't move to correct them. Instead she sat herself down on the log next to Emma's and leaned towards her.

'Is everything alright?'

'Oh, fine,' Emma replied from between her fingers. 'Just great.'

Regina looked across at where the broken shell of Emma's phone lay several feet away. She sighed, sucking down every inch of common sense that told her not to do this, and reached out towards her, taking her hand.

'I tried that too.'

Emma's now exposed face looked at her suspiciously. Scrubbing her free palm across her face, she sighed out loud and replied, 'Tried what?'

'The phone,' Regina nodded across at what remained of it.

'What about it?'

'I thought that your parents should probably know we're okay,' she admitted slowly. 'So I called Mary Margaret.'

Emma's mouth opened slightly. 'You did? When?'

'Back at the castle.' Regina let go of Emma's hand and sat back, rolling her eyes. 'Needless to say – it didn't work.'

Emma stared at her for a moment, her eyes darting about her face to work out whether she was being serious or not. Suddenly a sharp laugh burst from her own lips and her hands were once more pressed across her face, struggling to supress the hysterical giggles that were raging from her throat. Regina blinked, then slowly joined in.

'Oh my god,' Emma sniggered. 'We are so not cut out for this world, are we?'

'It would appear not,' Regina said with a dark smile. 'But at least I didn't hurl _my _phone against a tree, so I can still play a game of Tetris should I want to.'

Emma snorted loudly, rolling her eyes. She looked back over at the sad remains of her cell phone and shook her head to herself, her moment of heavy surrender from only minutes before now gone. She smiled at Regina, gesturing towards the tents behind them.

'Do we have anything for breakfast?'

'A few morsels,' Regina replied, wrinkling her nose. 'We will need to start hunting today though, Miss Swan.'

'I know,' Emma replied, rising to her feet with a sigh. 'Your job, or mine?'

The awkward silence that followed gave her the answer that she needed. Emma eyed up the bow and arrow that were resting against the inside of what was supposed to be Regina's tent and shrugged.

'_Luckily_,' she said, 'Mary Margaret taught me how to use one of those. You stick to the map-reading, your majesty – I'll take care of the real work.'

Regina laughed, rolling her eyes as Emma strolled over to the bow and strung it across her chest. Regina watched it cut across the loose fabric of her shirt, jutting in at the sharp dent of her waist. Emma turned to face her with a small, nervous smile on her lips – both of her thumbs were looped beneath the bow's sharp string and she looked utterly uncomfortable, and yet Regina was startled by how well the weapon suited her. Her hair, messy from sleeping, seemed to make no difference to the picture. She looked like the daughter of her mother in a way that for some reason Regina had never quite noticed before.

'We should probably get going then,' Emma said, looking down at her creased clothes and sighing. 'I'm not looking forwards to another day on a horse.'

'You have many more days of that to looks forwards to, dear,' Regina said as she sauntered past her, arching an eyebrow. Emma rolled her eyes and turned back to her tent, beginning to gather up her sparse possessions so that the second day of their journey could begin. Leaving what little remaining food they had in the bottom of a saddle bag, the tents were packed away and the two women continued on their path up the rocky hillside, one behind the other.

It turned out, however, that Emma was out of practice with her weapon. Her battered shoulder continued to scream at her each time she tried to lift the bow and so she spent the majority of the morning simply trying to ignore the pain and her frustration, biting down so hard on her lip that blood began to gather in the corner of her mouth. After several hours and her missing four different birds and a slow, lumbering deer with her arrows, it was just after what would have been lunchtime when she finally managed to kill an animal that partially resembled a giant squirrel. She leapt from her horse with an excited shout, stumbling through the trees to retrieve the body with her aching arm clamped to her side. Her arrow was sticking out of the creature's neck at an odd angle, but it was nonetheless dead. She proudly displayed it to Regina, who laughed down at her from her horse's back.

'You look like a cat who has just dragged a dead mouse through my foyer,' she said, clambering down from her own horse and leading both creatures into the nearest clearing. The sun was painfully hot and both women were glad for the shade of the trees overhead, but the tightly clustered branches meant that the air felt like liquid around them. As soon as the horses had been tethered and fed, both of their jackets were hung upon a tree and water from the nearby stream was splashed across their faces.

'Fucking hell,' Emma gasped, fanning at herself with a leaf. 'It is _hot_.'

Regina, who had been gathering wood for another fire, turned to look at her. 'It is. It's even hotter when you're actually doing some _work_, Miss Swan.'

'What?' Emma replied, tying her blonde curls in a loose ponytail at the back of her head. Regina gestured to the carcass of the squirrel that had been left on the floor nearby, already drawing the interest of several flies. 'Oh. Right.'

She pulled one of the knives from the supply bag and approached the body with it, wrinkling her nose. She had helped Mulan and Mary Margaret do this countless times – she'd even done it by herself on one occasion – but if her antics with the bow earlier had taught her anything it was that she was vastly out of practice with most of this world's methods. A disjointed catalogue of high school biology lessons ran through her brain as she placed the carcass onto a flat rock near the fire site, trying to remember exactly where most of the internal organs were.

Regina finished building the fire and sat silently by her side, watching the knife slide down the animal's stomach. Tiny beads of sweat were developing on Emma's brow, her teeth holding tightly onto her bottom lip as she concentrated. She didn't look at all convinced of what she was doing, and yet soon enough she leaned back and said, 'Okay. I think that's done.'

'You're sure?' Regina asked worriedly, looking down at the bloody, furless mess.

'Not entirely,' Emma said, returning to the stream to wash her hands. Regina sat waiting for her, pulling at the collar of her shirt to try and coax some air inside. Emma had long since taken hers off, her grubby old white tank covering her body instead, but Regina didn't have the luxury of having anything at all practical on underneath hers.

'The fire, Regina?' Emma asked as she returned, drying her hands off on her dark brown riding trousers. Regina blinked, realising that she hadn't lit it yet.

'Oh. Of course,' she said. 'Sorry. I'll just…'

'Don't worry,' Emma said, stopping off at the supply bag once more. 'I can do it. Do you want to fill these canteens up with water so we can have something to drink?'

Regina simply nodded, catching the bottles as they were thrown to her and sidling back across to the stream. Behind her, Emma got to work. The queen put her head down as she went about her menial chore; the one thing that she was apparently actually capable of doing. Tiny smears of blood from Emma's hands were dotted about on the surrounding rocks and Regina found that she couldn't take her eyes off of them, knowing how clean her own hands were in comparison and suddenly wondering how she had grown up in this land for most of her life without ever learning to do anything that was remotely useful.

The fire was lit within a couple of minutes, and Emma turned to see what Regina was doing. She found that she was still sat by the stream, the full canteens resting beside her. Her legs were outstretched to her left as she looked down into the water, her hand trailing just below the surface. Emma frowned, securing the squirrel onto a stick above the flames, before slowly walking over to her, wiping the sweat from her hands onto her shirt.

'Hey,' she said as she approached. When she received no answer she took a breath, then sat down cross-legged beside her. Regina's face, only inches away from hers, looked vacantly into the rushing water without saying a word. Her dark eyebrows were pulled closely together. Emma watched her for a moment, the heat of the sun beating down on her bare, bruised shoulders.

'What's up?' she asked after a pause. Regina pursed her lips, frowning. Then she turned to face her companion with a cool, expressionless face.

'Nothing.' She smiled briefly. 'I'm just fine.'

Emma resisted the urge to cattily raise an eyebrow. 'Sure you are,' she said, nudging the arm that Regina was leaning on. She took a deep breath. 'You know – I couldn't do it either, at first.'

'What?'

'The squirrel thing.'

'Which part?' Regina asked briskly, tilting her head to one side. 'The hunting part? The gutting part? Or the setting a fire in under sixty seconds and roasting the body to an edible perfection part?'

'Any of them,' Emma replied, leaning forwards to dip her own hand in the water. Next to Regina's it looked dirty and rough, and the queen's sudden retraction from the stream suggested that she too had noticed. 'Regina. You have to give yourself a break – you were a princess here, and then a queen. You're bound to have a hard time adjusting to all of this.'

'And yet you're not from here at all,' Regina snapped, turning to wipe her hand across her outstretched legs. 'But you seem to know everything.'

Emma ignored the bite to her voice. 'Because I had to learn, and pretty quickly. And now you do too. Luckily, you have someone who can actually teach you.'

Regina simply scoffed, tugging at the collar of her shirt once more. Emma frowned, feeling a familiar irritation burning in the pit of her stomach.

'Regina,' she said firmly, leaning forwards. 'Seriously. What have I done wrong?'

'Nothing.'

'_Regina_. Don't give me that. What have I done?'

'Nothing!' Regina snapped, swivelling on the spot to face her, her knees tucked under her rigid body. 'Do you not understand that, Miss Swan? That's the _point _– you haven't done anything wrong because you've been doing _everything_. And meanwhile I'm sat here, clinging onto the illusion that this is still my world and that I still know how we're going to survive here, when _clearly _I do not. I am utterly useless here. Just like I was back at home.'

Emma sucked in a breath through her teeth, saying in a low voice, 'Regina…'

'I can't help us here,' she interrupted. 'I'm a fallen queen who can't even be _nice _to you properly. There's no point in me even being on this journey – I won't be able to rescue Henry. He won't even want to see me. And you know, I'm finally starting to understand why he and everyone else deems you a better mother than me. Because evidently, it's the truth.'

Emma winced, and suddenly her hands reached out to grab Regina's shoulders. She pulled her close to her, their noses almost touching as she angrily hissed in reply, 'Regina. You do not _ever _say that again because I swear to God I will punch you straight in your face.'

Regina rolled her eyes, pulling herself out of her grip. 'Miss Swan—'

'I mean it,' Emma snapped, her green eyes glistening. 'You raised my son for me. _You_ did that. And look how he's turned out – he's perfect. He's so much better than I could have ever made him, and the fact that you can't light a fucking fire has got nothing at all to do with that.' She sighed, leaning back for a moment with her eyes rolled to the sky. 'He loves you, Regina. He _loves _you. He doesn't prefer me and he doesn't hate either of us and you know why? Because we're his _mothers_. You probably more so than me, because you… you_ have_ been there all along. You're his mother, and I owe you everything for that.'

A silence fell, the desperate echo of Emma's words fading between the trees. Regina looked at her, biting her lip sadly, knowing that Emma had meant what she'd said more than she'd ever meant anything before.

'Emma…' she said quietly, looking down at her hands.

'I'm sorry I ruined everything for you,' Emma choked out. 'I'm sorry for making you feel like you're not worth anything. Because you are. I promise you, you are.'

In the heavy quiet that followed Regina could only hear herself breathing, followed by a faint roaring as a lifetime of anger slowly disappeared from her chest. She looked back up, her dark eyes locking onto Emma's green ones, and when the blonde woman slowly leaned forwards she didn't pull back. She didn't close her eyes. She felt a pair of lips softly pressing against hers and she froze, the sensation unfamiliar and gentler than she'd thought and yet causing the nerves in the tips of her fingers to spark. She dug her nails deep into her own legs, her breath caught suddenly in her lungs. Emma's hand reached up for a moment, pressing her warm fingers against the tight line of Regina's jaw, her thumb stroking a delicate pattern against the skin there. And then she pulled away again, biting at her bottom lip. She looked at Regina sadly, waiting for her to say something. Anything.

She clambered to her feet a minute later, returning to the fire and cooking their lunch with her back to the queen. Regina sat frozen by the stream, an unfamiliar taste playing about her lips. She tried to ignore the painful beating of her heart as she watched Emma go, her nails digging into the skin of her thighs. The thick air swam about her, pressing down on her shoulders. She felt water on her face that might have been either sweat or tears and she waited for her body to start working again, for her heart to beat normally again – for her legs to clamber up from the rocks and allow her to follow after the woman who had just made her feel wanted and hated all in one devastating sweep of her lips.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

Later that afternoon, just on the cusp of nightfall, swollen clouds began to gather over the dwarves' cottage. The world outside the windows grew dark as heavy lashings of rain began to beat against the stone walls. Inside, crouched around the cramped dining table, nine figures sat. Henry remained in his room – his punishment for being caught sneaking out again earlier that afternoon. Granny's eyebrows were furrowed deep across her eyes as she spoke about that very topic.

'I just don't see us being able to keep him indoors,' she sighed. 'He's such a curious little boy, and he thinks that he's made a friend. He has no reason to understand why we're so concerned.'

'But why are we so concerned?' Dopey chimed in. A table full of eyes rolled over to him.

'Because a grown man is following a young boy around,' Doc said slowly. 'Because he took him from his room and—'

'No, I get all of that,' Dopey interrupted, raising a hand. 'But we were already concerned before all of that happened. What is _really _wrong with this guy?'

'The bow, Dopey,' Red said in a low voice, leaning forwards across the table. 'There's something wrong with that bow. I mean, not only did he try to kill me with it – but he missed. He was _disappointed _that he had missed. There's something up.'

'Granny. Did I hear you say that you'd seen it once before?' Grumpy asked, leaning towards her. Outside of the cottage there was a heavy crash of thunder and the room was momentarily illuminated by an explosion of lightning. Sleepy jumped, looking about him with blinking eyes.

'I've never seen it,' Granny sighed, speaking as quietly as she could. 'But I've heard of it.'

'How?'

'Trading,' she replied. 'I didn't just get my crossbow from the market – I had to get something more powerful, something special for dealing with… mine and Red's little problem. So I traded for it. And while I was doing so, I heard some rumours.'

'Granny?' Red said slowly. 'You didn't tell me about this.'

'Why would I?' she replied. 'It made no difference to me – I had no reason to think they were even true.'

'What did you hear?' Doc asked, frowning at her. Another flash of lightning cast a dark shadow across the old woman's face as she answered.

'There was talk of a magical weapon,' she said, looking down at her thumbnail as it traced a groove through the wooden table. 'One of the Dark One's creations. It was truly feared, because it wasn't even bewitched – it was cursed. It was cursed so that it would hit the heart of a living target no matter where it was shot.'

'What kind of hunter would need something like that?' Red asked.

'A hunter wouldn't,' Granny replied. 'A bad hunter would.'

'He must be a _seriously _bad hunter,' Red laughed to herself. 'He couldn't even hit me – he ended up hitting a bird instead. No wonder he was pissed.'

'Which surely makes him all the more dangerous,' Doc said. 'A terrible hunter with a terrible weapon.'

'And he's interested in Henry.'

Red sighed. 'This is not good news.'

The circle of figures looked down at the table, their foreheads creased. Outside of the cottage the storm continued to rage. In the next flash of lightning, if anyone had looked, they would have seen the dark shape of an enormous man standing in the window. He listened to every word that was being spoken until they finally fell silent. With his hair slickened down into his black eyes by the rain, he moved silently back into the night, a strange bow clutched in his fierce grip.

* * *

Regina and Emma consumed their meal quickly and without speaking to one another, heaving themselves back up onto their horses the moment that the last rough piece of meat had been consumed. Departing from the thick-aired clearing with their eyes down, they trudged through the forest in complete silence even as the dull roar of thunder signalled that clouds were beginning to roll in overhead.

Regina's heavy eyes looked up to the greyness that was starting to envelope the forest. It was still only late afternoon, but in the far distance the blaze of lightning was illuminating the trees and she knew that night would fall soon. Still she didn't glance around at the woman who rode behind her. A fog of humiliation filled the air surrounding Miss Swan and she could feel it dragging her backwards. Even the horses were quieter than normal. Besides the thudding of their hooves the only sound that the queen could hear was that distant, crying thunder, occasionally interspersed with the angry clicking of Emma's jaw.

Emma couldn't even bring herself to look up at those irritating clouds. Ahead of her the queen's back was perfectly rigid underneath her riding gear and the very sight of her made the blonde woman's whole body vibrate with resentment. With every inch that they moved forwards she found herself pushing more angrily at the memory of what had happened in that clearing. What had she been _thinking_? The woman whom she hated more than anyone else in the world, who was the only thing standing between her and her son and, oh yeah, had tried to kill her once or twice – what was the _matter _with her? She forced her lips into a thin line, fighting to ignore the fact that she could still taste the queen on them, and slowed her horse down so that Regina was another couple of metres away from her. Her eyebrows drew more tightly together – she framed your mother for murder, you absolute _idiot_. She killed your boyfriend and then she tried to feed you a poisoned apple fucking turnover, and nothing has changed since then. Regardless of what Henry said. Regardless of what Emma kept trying to convince herself might be possible.

She shook her head as vigorously as she could, all the while the air around her growing progressively darker. It was still warm from the earlier sunshine, the heat of the day trapped beneath the gathering clouds, but night was falling upon them twice as fast as usual. Without meaning to Emma flashed back to the previous night, the darkness of the surrounding woods, the sight of Regina's anxious face as she had crouched down in her tent to keep her company. Her warm, sleeping body pressed up against her own. She groaned to herself, rolling her eyes. _Stop it, Emma_. She slowed George down yet again, Regina's scarlet frame falling even further away from her. _Just stop it._

The first fat drops of rain began to fall a few minutes later, the lightning swiftly following. Regina squinted up at the black air, sighing to herself, before finally turning back to her companion. Emma Swan was twice as far away from her as she had been when they'd left the clearing, but she chose to ignore this fact.

'We have to stop,' she shouted back at her through the quickly falling raindrops. Emma frowned.

'We can't camp in this,' she shouted back at her. Regina sighed once more, looking back up at the sky.

'We can if we're quick,' she slowed her horse down, turning to face her. 'We need to set up the tents before the rain gets any worse.'

'Regina, I promise you—' Emma's words were cut off by a crack of thunder rolling through the trees. It was immediately followed by a downpour of rain that closely resembled a trough of water being emptied onto the pair of them, nearly choking Emma midsentence. Her hair, now dark brown and heavy with rain, stuck to the sides of her face as she looked pointedly back at the equally drenched queen. Regina rolled her eyes, what was left of her dark makeup pooling underneath her lashes. She looked at the surrounding trees for a moment, at the puddles of dank water that were forming beneath her horse's stamping hooves, and gritted her teeth.

'Fine,' she shouted through the water. 'We'll keep going and hope we find somewhere sheltered.'

'Like where?' Emma called. 'You happen to know a woman who lives in a shoe around here?'

'I don't _know_, Miss Swan. Let's hang around for the next ten minutes discussing it, shall we?' Regina snapped, pulling at her horse's reins until he began to edge through the trees once more. Emma groaned, using both of her hands to sluice the water from her face, before reluctantly following her.

As the rain hammered down on them, soaking through every shred of fabric that covered their bodies, both women peered through the downpour in hopes of finding a scrap of land that was fully sheltered by thicker trees or some kind of rock. They had little success, however, barely managing to see three feet in front of them through the sheets of water that were tumbling from the sky. The heat of the afternoon still hung about them, and soon Emma was unable to distinguish between the rain and the sweat that was dripping from her body. She adjusted her position on her horse's back, bracing herself against slipping off of the saddle, and ploughed forwards, following only the faint glimmer of Regina's deep scarlet jacket floating somewhere ahead of her.

I_ hate_ this goddamn place, she thought to herself. If she was in Storybrooke she would have the roof of her yellow bug protecting her now, if not the four walls and central heating of an actual apartment. Here, she could feel her hair plastered against her back through her flimsy jacket while the woven material of her riding trousers did absolutely nothing to stop warm, woody water seeping into the skin of her legs. Beneath the reins of her horse her fingernails were digging so sharply into her palms that blood was being drawn, and yet she didn't notice any pain at all against the grating discomfort that she was feeling in every other nerve of her irritated body.

'Miss Swan!' The sudden shout of her name made her jump. She looked up, peering through the grey air, to that find Regina was looking round at her expectantly. She had stopped her horse, her left hand pointing off into the distance. Emma followed its direction but quickly realised that she wouldn't be able to see anything until she caught up with her – nudging George into action, they trotted across the sodden ground until she caught sight of something that threatened to bring tears to her stinging eyes.

'Is that a cabin?'

'I think so,' Regina shouted through the rain, quickly taking off towards it, her horse's hooves pounding through the sludge. Emma followed without a second thought, her eyes half-closed against the driving rain and the sprays of mud that were rebounding against her face. She suddenly didn't care. The outline of a dilapidated and probably dangerously unsafe little cottage was taking shape before her and she had never before been so glad to see something that wasn't simply more trees or rain or dirt.

The pair of them thudded to the floor outside, leading their horses underneath a crude porch just as another bolt of lightening shattered through the sky. The animals collapsed gratefully onto the comparatively dry land, shaking their sodden manes out as Regina dug through the supply bags for their remaining stock of feed. As she laid it out beside a nearby gutter that was steadily filling with rainwater, Emma approached the nearest window and peered inside: the building was clearly abandoned, and utterly desecrated. What little furniture remained was overturned and slashed to pieces, the majority of the fabric rotten or turning to dust, and the wooden floor was cracked and covered with shattered ornaments. As a result, Emma didn't hesitate in taking her boot to the flimsy wooden door and kicking it down with one easy shove.

The air inside the cabin was densely warm and smelt of leaves and rot. Emma wrinkled her nose, looking up at the roof that was leaking in at least a dozen spots and looked dangerously close to collapsing on her head. She quickly realised that she didn't care all that much. Tugging off the sodden jacket that had once been cream-coloured but was now stained with grey and brown, she hung it up on a nearby peg and began to wring her hair out directly onto the decaying floorboards.

From behind her she heard Regina staggering through the door, struggling under the weight of all of the bags that had previously been attached to the backs of the horses.

'A little help, Miss Swan?' she snapped even as Emma rushed over to her, taking three of the dripping bundles from her and placing them on the nearest table. The one bag that had held all of their blankets and sheets mercifully had a fully functioning waterproof lining. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for any of the others.

'For _God's _sake,' Emma grumbled, pulling out her spare shirt and wringing it out into the same puddle that her hair had left. 'None of this shit is ever going to dry.'

'I'll start a fire,' Regina murmured, approaching the dank fire place with a wrinkled nose. 'That should help a bit.'

Emma muttered something indecipherable in response, beginning to empty each of the bags across the table in an attempt to salvage some of their possessions. On the walls either side of the hearth there were several hooks that had evidently once held up pictures: Emma quickly took one of the pieces of rope from the bundles that were once their tents and fashioned a makeshift drying line across them, squeezing the water out of every piece of fabric that she found crumpled in the bottom of their bags and hanging them up with irritated arms.

Regina, meanwhile, spread their dry blankets out across the floor directly in front of the fireplace. Next to the hearth itself she spotted a metal crate and opened it, bracing herself for spiders or dead rats, but instead finding kindling and, mercifully, several dry matches. For the first time since their journey had begun she managed to light a fire with ease, and for the next few moments she simply knelt before it, watching as the tiny flames jumped across the hearth and spread a delicate warmth across her tired, dripping cheeks.

The heavy weight of her hair and clothes soon began to grate on her, and she forced herself to her feet. She removed her sodden boots, placing them next to Emma's at the side of the hearth, before standing upright with an exhausted sigh. Her leather riding trousers were stuck to every inch of her skin and she itched to pull them off, but she forced herself to first undo her jacket – once red, now simply black – and hang it on the one remaining peg on the cabin's walls.

Eventually her head turned to where Emma was stood only ten feet away, still angrily hanging their remaining possessions across the piece of rope. A puddle was slowly forming beneath it. Regina watched her aggressive movements as she wrung out the final item – the one blanket that had been at the opening of the waterproof bag and therefore hadn't been as lucky as its companions – and threw it onto the line of drying clothes. Her hands then reached up to her own chest, tearing off the loose white shirt from her body and draping it across the tiny space that remained at the end of the rope.

With her back to Regina, not realising that she was being watched, she simply stood for a moment with her hands resting on her hips. Her head was leant forwards, looking down at where her bare feet rested in a dirty, spreading puddle. Through the window behind her head Regina would have seen that the rain wasn't slowing down, nor was the roaring thunder ceasing. Her gaze, however, was distracted by the visible line of Emma Swan's spine through her drenched white tank top, the nodules of her ribs sticking out against the fabric.

Fighting back the irritation caused by her own dripping clothes, Regina watched as Emma reached up to grasp at her hair, rolling it into a thick blonde rope so that the remaining water could cascade down onto the rotting floorboards. In that movement, as the protective sheet of hair vanished momentarily from her back, Regina caught the flash of battered, broken skin through the translucent fabric of her shirt. The purple bruises had faded slightly and yet they were nonetheless still glaringly obvious, scarring the pale flesh like the contents of an overturned inkwell seeping through a tattered piece of parchment. Regina felt her eyebrows knitting together as she stared. Emma's hair was eventually replaced against her back, running its usual line down to her waist and covering up the ink once more. Looking at her ruined curls, Regina suddenly caught the scratching scent of vanilla deep within her nostrils, and found herself taking a jolting step forwards through the cabin towards her.

As Emma felt the queen's hand gently touch her back, she froze. One of her hands lay against her own chest, nervously grabbing for her swan necklace, while the other hung loosely by her side. Regina's fingers rested against her spine for only a moment, before they were slowly replaced by the warm line of her entire body. Emma felt her forehead resting against the back of her skull, a warm exhale of breath on her damp neck, and she closed her eyes. Regina swallowed, slipping both of her hands down to the jutting hip bones of the woman who stood before her. They simply stood there for a moment, the rain drumming against the flimsy roof above them as they felt the unfamiliar warmth of the other's body. Emma realised that she couldn't breathe. Her eyes were still closed, her body rigid, as she felt one of Regina's hands slipping shakily up her spine in order to take hold of her sodden, matted hair. She slowly pushed it to one side, placing it over Emma's shoulder until every inch of her bruised shoulders were exposed to her gaze. Only as she leant forwards to place a tiny, nervous kiss on that pulsing bruise did Emma finally regain the ability to inhale.

As she groaned she immediately felt Regina's hands on her shoulders, spinning her around to face her and pushing her forcefully against the damp wall. Those dark eyes ground into her for a moment, daring her to push her away or to tell her to stop. With their noses pushed together but their lips not touching, Emma's hands reached up to Regina's face, trembling against her flushed cheeks before pushing her fingers through the queen's knotted hair. Regina inhaled sharply, her own hands pressing firmly against Emma's waist, holding her against the wall. She could feel the blonde woman struggling to breath, her inhalations stilted and sharp. Nonetheless her green eyes remained wide open, looking directly into her own, not scared of her or humiliated by her but simply begging her not to leave her.

Regina finally leaned forwards and their lips met, her hands clawing at the thin fabric covering Emma's stomach. She felt the blonde woman groan into her mouth, tugging at the back of her neck in order to bring her closer to her. Their lips blended together, opening slightly as one woman sighed into the other, their bodies straining full of air and frantically pounding heartbeats. Regina slowly drew her tongue across Emma's teeth as she felt those fingers clawing at the back of her head, desperately trying to pull her even nearer. In response she released her grip on Emma's waist, instead sliding her hands up past her chest and across her sharp collar bone, fiercely wrapping her fingers around Emma's aching jaw. Emma moaned into her mouth, ignoring the scream of her shoulders as she was pushed harder against the wall. Regina's tongue yet again flicked against her own, dragging its burning path across her lips.

She released her grip on the queen's dark hair, slipping her hands around her throat for just a moment before ushering them down to her wet chest, squeezing at her breasts for long enough that Regina gasped, severing the connection of their lips. Their eyes met as Emma's hands continued on their southwards path, prising open the line of buttons on Regina's shirt and slipping beneath its fabric. Her nails tiptoed across the wet skin, feeling the jut of the queen's hipbones and ribcage beneath her prying fingers, looking deep into her dark eyes as she shuddered against her. As Emma's hands reached the tight waistband of her leather pants Regina groaned, burying her face deep in the blonde's shoulder and biting down hard against the pathetic flesh that she found there. Emma gasped out loud, plunging her hands down into the queen's clothing, scratching at the skin of her hips. She could feel Regina's lips moving frantically against her neck, the soft rasp of her tongue climbing a path up towards her trembling jawline, her teeth clinging on desperately any time she felt Emma's fingers stop moving.

'Oh my God,' Emma groaned as Regina's hands suddenly pushed her shirt from her shoulders, dragging the fabric down so that her bra was exposed. 'Oh, shit.'

Regina pulled away for just a moment, her grinning lips red and sore, her eyes challenging.

'Anything wrong, dear?' she asked, her voice low, just as she leaned in to capture Emma's bottom lip between her teeth. A muted whimper erupted from Emma's throat and suddenly their mouths were together again, kissing furiously as Emma's hands retracted from their position at the sides of Regina's pants and instead took up residence at the front. Trapped between their two arching bodies her fingers struggled with the zipper, but after a moment she was able to tear the leather fabric aside and push one hand fiercely beneath it.

Regina tore her mouth away, leaning her forehead against Emma's and breathing hotly against her cheek as she felt her fingers inching down between her legs. Clutching hold of Emma's waist she pressed her whole body against her, struggling not to groan, biting down on her aching bottom lip. Emma closed her eyes, cursing the soaked fabric that she was battling with. Eventually her hand retracted, reaching back up to Regina's hair and pulling her sharply off of her.

'Miss Swan—?' she stammered, looking into Emma's unflinching expression with her chest heaving.

'They need to come off,' she leaned forwards and murmured the words so softly that they were almost drowned out by the beating rain outside. Burying her face against the queen's neck, her hands began to pull the slick leather down. 'Now.'

'Well. Ladies first,' Regina immediately responded, pushing Emma back against the wall with a sharp thud and gripping hold of the bottom of her shirt. It was torn over her head, shortly followed by her own and both of their bras. Emma smiled wickedly, taking a single second to run her hand against Regina's flushed cheek before she grabbed hold of her shoulders and spun her around, slamming her back against the wall so abruptly that she couldn't quite catch her breath before Emma had slipped down to her knees before her.

She dragged her tongue down the mayor's exposed stomach as she went, finally reaching the leather pants and pulling them sharply off to expose a sheer black thong. The queen's head thudded back against the wall as it too was torn from her body, Emma's fingers quickly driving their way inside her. Regina's hands knotted their way through her blonde hair, tugging her closer as she gasped up at the rotten ceiling, struggling to drag air back into her lungs. Emma's tongue too found its way between her legs and before she could stop herself, Regina moaned out loud. Emma smirked against her skin, pushing a second finger deep inside her and pinning her hips more roughly against the wall, stopping her from writhing or arching or trying to push her away. Regina's fingers were embedded so deeply in Emma's long hair that, at the moment where she knew she would come if she didn't stop this, she heard her sharp cry of pain as she ripped them out again.

Gripping holding of Emma's wrists, she pulled her to her feet and forced her mouth onto hers before she could protest. Regina began to push her over to the other side of the room, guided by the sound of the dimly roaring fire and the sudden feel of fabric underneath their bare feet. Pushing Emma away from her, the queen's dark eyes glittered wickedly for a moment.

'Your turn, dear,' she muttered, roughly taking hold of her hips and forcing her down onto the pile of blankets. 'Let's see if you're feeling quite so cocky when I'm finished with you.'

Emma raised an eyebrow, her tongue darting out to wet her smirking lips. Regina crawled on top of her, her body pressed between her still-clothed legs, and forced a kiss onto her that stopped the sheriff's heart from beating for a moment. Her soaked trousers were dragged from her body a second later. Regina coolly raised an eyebrow as she looked down at Emma's frantically heaving stomach, her spread legs, her red underwear. She tore the fabric from her body, tossing it back over her head, before allowing her mouth to take its place. Above her, Emma's hands grabbed hold of the mounds of fabric surrounding them, her back arching and her mouth crying out as the queen released her tongue and dragged it roughly against her.

Emma could feel Regina's fingers slipping in and out of her with a blinding fury that nearly tipped her over the edge within seconds. Every muscle in her body tensed as she fought against the sensation, beating back the desperate urge to come with her voice screaming from her lips. She pushed back at Regina's head, hearing herself pleading with her to stop.

'Oh no,' Regina muttered against her skin, flicking out her tongue once more and cackling to herself as she heard a sharp cry erupting from above her. 'I don't think so, dear.'

She pursed her lips and started to suck at Emma's clit until her whole body began to shudder. Regina heard the air hissing from between her teeth. Thrusting two fingers back inside her she watched Emma's face as it tore from side to side, her back arching up into the air as a strangled moan was released from her throat, every muscle electrocuted by the orgasm that was attempting to rip through her body. Surrounded by the haze of her matted blonde hair, her forehead was clenched into desperate lines as she forced herself not to scream. Her white teeth gritted together, her hands tore at the sheets, as she threw her head back and suddenly all she could see was black.

After she came, the small of her back thudded lifelessly down onto the blankets, her eyes wide open and staring up at the ceiling. Breaths were heaving back into her lungs, her chest rising and falling as she desperately tried to regain her composure. When she had finally caught her breath she raised her sweaty head up from the floor, looking down at the lower half of her body where Regina was lying, her head on one hand, an eyebrow raised smugly.

'You utter bitch,' Emma panted, pushing herself up off of the floor. Her hands grabbed at the queen's face, pulling her fiercely towards her and kissing her before Regina could try to scrabble away from her. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of Emma's damp hair as her hands slowly found their way back to her waist. As their lips drew apart, she realised that Emma was smirking down at her once more. She leaned slowly forwards, pressing her mouth against Regina's ear so that her words came out in a single, hot breath.

'You're going to pay for that, your majesty,' she muttered, her hand crawling back down the queen's stomach. Regina groaned, her eyes snapping shut.

'You don't—'

'Shut up,' Emma said, grabbing holding of both of Regina's wrists and quickly pushing her down onto her back. Sitting atop her, pinning the queen's arms either side of her head, she pressed a fierce kiss onto her trembling lips before sliding back down her body. 'I think you'll find that it's _my_ move.'


	11. Chapter 11

_**Author's note: **Hi guys! Before this begins I just wanted to say a really quick thank you to everyone who's favourited or followed this story so far, and of course to all the people who've actually taken the time to send me a review. I'm a bit startled by the lovely things you've had to say - as this is my first fic I wasn't entirely sure how it would go down, so I'm really really happy that so many people are actually enjoying it! Thanks for reading and I hope you'll continue to like where I'm going with it._

_And also: I've been updating this fairly regularly so far, but it might slow down a bit over the next few weeks. I'm in the middle of writing my dissertation and will start revising for my finals soon, so if I get a bit slow then please bear with me - I won't be happy about it either. Wish me luck...!_

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

A drop of water fell from the rotten roof and landed on Regina's temple, jolting her awake. She slapped it away, feeling a dampness in her hair that suggested that the roof had been leaking for some time before she'd noticed, before opening her bleary eyes to the rest of the room. It was light outside: the storm had passed and it was early morning once again. The fire had burned itself out many hours before. Yawning, Regina wrinkled her nose and tried to stretch out her arms, frowning when she felt something tugging them back. She blinked. It was then that she felt the weight of another pair of arms wrapped around her waist and the warm exhalation of breath against the back of her neck.

_Oh God. _She froze. _Oh no_.

She slowly dragged her dark eyes across her shoulder, trying to look behind her without turning her head. It didn't take long before the flash of blonde hair slipped into her field of vision and she gasped out loud, clapping a hand across her mouth - her mouth that was still swollen and tingling from the events of the night before. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, cursing herself and her stupidity and the irresponsible, awkward, awful woman who was currently lying behind her with her bare leg draped loosely across both of her own.

Managing to wriggle free of Emma's grip, Regina sucked in a breath and sat herself upright. Emma mumbled something in her sleep, pulling her legs up to her chest. Regina watched her with a flat expression until she fell still again. A heavy dread was sinking in her stomach and she could feel the corners of her mouth being dragged down with it, her throat scratching whenever she swallowed. She looked up towards the broken front door, at the horses grazing just outside, and wondered whether she could get up and run before Emma had stirred. No other plan struck her as being in any way more rational: a cold, jarring terror was stabbing at her insides and she could feel herself shuddering away from Emma any time she wriggled in her sleep, her breath catching in her lungs. With every passing second her pathetic escape route looked more and more appealing, even as she glanced back down at the mess of blonde hair spread out beside her. Regina sucked in a breath through trembling lips, and began to force herself to stand up.

A snuffle came from beneath Emma's curls. She gently stretched out her arms, and her hand knocked against Regina's. Still sleeping, her prying fingers laced their way through the queen's and stayed there, her thumb rubbing a gentle circle against the inside of her wrist. Regina blinked, choking back a moan. She scrubbed her free hand beneath her eyes, looking down at the chaos of blonde hair and the stubborn angles of Emma's body, and the terror that had been drumming within the tight muscles of her stomach began to lessen ever so slightly. Emma wriggled once more, drawing their interlaced fingers closer so that she could nuzzle a sleepy cheek against them. A tender smile tugged at the corners of Regina's mouth.

Slipping back down onto the blankets, she turned to face Emma with only the tight knot of their hands separating their foreheads. There was silence for a few moments and Regina let her eyes dart across the other woman's face, taking in the deep creases that were carved about her eyebrows and the lighter ones that crinkled around her nose whenever she moved. Even as she slept her tongue would flick out and gently wet her lips. Regina watched her with sadly knitted eyebrows - she was so _irritatingly_ beautiful. As she watched Emma sleep she felt something tapping sharply against the inside of her chest, and she knew in an instant the reason why she had let last night happen. She didn't allow herself to dwell on it, however. Instead she slowly reached out a hand and pushed a strand of hair away from Emma's face, watching as her eyebrows creased together and she gradually began to stir.

She opened her eyes and was immediately met with the anxious pout on Regina's face. Before she was even fully awake her head shot back half an inch, her fingers automatically tugging themselves free from the queen's. Regina watched the memory of the previous night flash across her green eyes and she swallowed, waiting for Emma to throw the blankets from her and tear towards the door, ready to run in the very same way that she had been prepared to only minutes before. She shut her eyes as she waited for the footsteps. When there were none, she cracked them open once more and found that Emma was still frowning at her with unfathomable confusion carved into the lines around her mouth.

Regina took a deep breath and then she smiled, feeling her lips quivering as she did so. Emma's breath caught in her throat. She watched the warmth spreading across the queen's face and for a moment forgot whom she was laying with, whose dark eyes were pinning her down. The sad smile gradually slipped from Regina's mouth; the same mouth that twelve hours before had done things to her that had nearly driven Emma hysterical, and before she registered what she was doing, her own thin lips quirked upwards at one side.

She reached out a hand, taking a strand of Regina's hair between two of her fingers and pushing it back from her face. She watched as a blush raced into her cheeks. This close, the scar that cut across the slash of her mouth was painfully obvious, and Emma didn't think before reaching out her thumb and dragging it down the white line. Regina pursed her lips and kissed the pad of her finger as it passed.

Emma's eyes crinkled as she smiled properly for the first time that morning. 'Hi.'

Regina's dark eyebrows curved upwards with relief.

'Good morning,' she murmured, squeezing Emma's fingers between her own and closing her eyes.

* * *

Henry clambered back through the bedroom window just as the sun had begun to drain its way through the nearby trees. Unlike the previous days, however, his bottom lip was jutting sharply downwards in the same way that his mother's did when she was worried. As he perched himself on the edge of his bed the bow that had been clutched in his hand fell to the wooden floor with a clatter, and he didn't attempt to catch it. Instead he nudged it further away from him with the toe of his shoe, watching it skid across the floorboards and land with a clunk in the far corner of the room.

His lessons with Robert were still going well. Henry was realising more and more, with every arrow that he shot, that he was well and truly a natural at this – his aim was better than Robert's was, and that was without the fancy arrows that somehow managed to change their own course of direction whenever they felt like it. That morning Henry hadn't missed a single target and the sense of triumph that beat against his chest had been overwhelming. The joy of the moment, however, was quickly disrupted when he realised that he had no one to share his happiness with.

The dull repetition of Robert's words – 'Nice shot' – did nothing for him anymore, simply because he knew that the enormous man wasn't interested. Not really. Every lesson he would allow Henry to shoot exactly ten arrows, easing himself back into the comfortable routine of his new-found talent, before suddenly the questions would start. At first they appeared to be mere curiosities – eventually Henry was forced to realise that Robert was after actual information.

'So where exactly did this curse take everyone?' had been his main question of that morning. 'Where have you and Regina lived all of this time?'

Henry's answers had grown progressively less detailed and the creases in his brow had simultaneously deepened. Every question that Robert asked seemed to be about the same things – about Regina, or Emma, or Snow, and whether it was likely that they'd come and find him soon. How they'd get there. How they'd get back. Henry didn't know the answer to a lot of these and by the end of their lesson he had begun to reply with small shrugs, focusing more intently on the arrows that he was shooting into the far distance. Robert's impatience had swelled like a tide.

Now Henry was alone once more, and he realised that he was uncomfortable. Worse than that: he was suspicious. Robert was clearly after something that had nothing whatsoever to do with teaching him how to shoot and, for the first time since he had arrived in the forest, he wished that he had listened to Red when she had told him to stay away.

He felt the crackle of tears from beneath his eyelids and sighed, looking about his lonely room. It was small, and held nothing that was in any way his. It was nothing like his room in the Mayor's mansion – nothing even like the box room in Emma's tiny apartment. As he thought of those two women a hot tear seeped out from beneath his lashes and he swallowed, feeling a hard lump pressing against his throat. He knew how much he missed them, but he hated himself for it. He hated _them_ for it. He tore his quiver of arrows off of his back and hurled it against his pillows just as the door creaked open, Red's worried frown appearing from the other side.

When she sat down beside him and gathered her arms about his shoulders, he let himself fall into her, sobbing blindly. Red didn't say a word, stroking at his hair as he unleashed his rage against the two women who had loved him and fought for him and then betrayed him through the flood of salty tears that dripped down his flushed cheeks. Red squeezed him more tightly to her chest, feeling the heat that radiated from him and sighing to herself. She knew how he felt – he was devastated, and he was lonely. She hadn't wanted to admit it to herself but, after only a few days of being back in this withered, unrefined world, she was feeling the ache of seclusion as well. She thought about Snow, about Emma, about Ashley and Archie and the countless other people whom they'd left behind, and buried a kiss into the sweaty mess of hair on top of Henry's head. He squeezed his arms more tightly about her waist. They rocked from side to side for a long time, both of their eyes fiercely shut as they blocked out the sounds of the woods and the quiet and the dull hum of nothing going on in a world to which they obviously didn't belong any more.

* * *

The horses trudged deeper into the forest, the ground sodden and slippery beneath their hooves. The two women on top of them sat in a comfortable silence as they moved, no longer riding one behind the other but remaining firmly side by side as they edged through the trees.

Emma glanced to her left for the tenth time that morning, her eyes yet again being impulsively drawn to the dark red smudge that scarred the queen's neck. If she looked for long enough, she could just make out the teeth marks surrounding it. Regina obviously didn't know that it was there and Emma sniggered to herself, for the first time on their journey thanking the forest for its inability to provide them with a mirror. Regina heard the soft laugh and looked across at her, watching the blush spreading across the blonde's face with a twisted smile. Her dark eyes fell down to Emma's collar bone, absorbing the line of three bruises that grew progressively darker as they reached towards the most tender spot of her throat. She bit on her bottom lip to stop herself from cackling and turned away once more, feeling the burn of Emma's gaze following her.

Emma's spirits were high enough that the throbbing pain of her shoulder had lessened, and so when she pulled an arrow out of the quiver that was strung across her back and shot it wordlessly through the trees, it struck the animal that she had spotted before Regina had even heard the leaves rustling. The queen stared round at her as she leapt from her horse, battling through the undergrowth in order to claim her prize. It was a bird, and it was enormous. It could easily feed the both of them for the at least their next two meals.

'Fancy some lunch, your majesty?' she asked, squinting up at Regina. The queen nodded, and Emma mounted her horse once more. The pair of them rode on for the next few minutes until they found a clearing big enough for the horses to rest in, and then they settled down into their new routine: Emma began to tear the bird into pieces, while Regina struggled with building the fire.

Once the bird had been gutted and was roasting on the fire that Regina had crudely constructed, Emma sat herself down next to the stream that they had been following through the forest and, dipping her bare feet into the shallow water, began scrubbing the blood and dirt from her hands. Regina remained by the fire, watching her, and growing progressively more agitated as she realised just how badly she wanted to go over to her. She bit her lip, desperately trying to think of a reason to need to speak to her. The usually unflappable mayor hated this feeling; this sense that the words rattling about in her brain were too clunky to fit in her mouth, and she sighed to herself. Why on earth was she nervous to speak to her in the first place? What was it about this ridiculous woman that suddenly had her tripping over her own tongue?

Regina immediately found herself thinking of Emma's own tongue and what she had done to her with it, and she sucked a breath in through her teeth. This was ridiculous: she hardly had to have a _reason_ to want to talk to her. She pushed herself to her feet and began to stride over towards Emma's turned back, when suddenly the saddle bags resting on the floor near the horses caught her eye. The water canteens – they surely needed filling anyway. She adjusted her course and slipped over to the tree that the bag was resting up against, pulling it open and beginning to rummage around inside it for the bottles. Her hands found them and she stood upright once more, turning around to resume her path to the pathetic stream. She was immediately faced with the half-smile of Emma Swan, stood only inches away from her with her hands on her hips. Before Regina could say a word the blonde stepped forwards, grabbing hold of her waist with hands still cold from the water, and pushed her back against the tree.

She kissed her more softly than she had done the night before, her tongue teasing against her teeth while her hands gently stroked at her stomach beneath her shirt. Regina moaned quietly, dropping the empty bottles to the floor and wrapping her arms around Emma's neck. The weight of the her body pressed against her, digging her into the rough bark of the tree. She ran a hand over the blonde curls that were tumbling across both of their shoulders and sighed into Emma's mouth, dipping her tongue in further until the anxious weight that had been dragging her stomach down all morning finally lifted and she felt like she was rising slowly above the sodden ground.

Emma's teeth bit down on the queen's bottom lip, sucking at it for a moment before slowly pulling her face away. Regina's eyes snapped open, looking into her amused expression and smiling, before leaning forwards to try and capture her mouth once more. Emma tugged her head back yet again, keeping her grinning lips out of her reach.

'What is it?' Regina purred, running a thumb underneath the blonde curls until she found the soft spot of skin beneath Emma's ear that she already knew was her kryptonite. Emma's eyes momentarily closed, her lips parting as she sucked in a gasp of air. Regina ran a sharp nail down the spot until the gasp turned into a reluctant moan, and then she let go. Emma opened her eyes once more, laughing to herself.

'Do you think we've been wanting to do this all along?' she asked. Her hands were still holding onto Regina's waist, the lower half of her body thrust forwards and resting against the brunette's. The corner of Regina's mouth quirked upwards into a hopeless smile.

'It would certainly explain why I've always found you so infuriating,' she said, raising an eyebrow. 'In any case, it would have made your first year in Storybrooke slightly more enjoyable.'

A laugh burst forth from Emma's mouth and she quickly leaned back in for another kiss, nibbling at Regina's lip as she did so. She felt the queen's mouth smiling beneath hers.

'Come on,' Regina said when they finally pulled away once more, their noses bumping. 'I'm starving, and if you've destroyed that bird then I'll be expecting you to go and catch another one.'

Emma rolled her eyes and let herself be led back over to the fire, not bothering to supress the smile that was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

As they were eating their meal, finally finishing off the stale remains of the food that the servants had packed for them, Emma asked how long it would be until they reached their first stop. Regina wrinkled her nose, thinking back to the tiny spot marking Granny and Red's cottage on the map, its inked lines smeared by yesterday's rain storm.

'Not long,' she said, swallowing her mouthful. 'Another few hours. Maybe less, if we move quickly and stop getting quite so distracted.'

She watched as Emma smirked. Her gaze then fell to the ground as she nodded. 'Right.'

The pair fell into another silence, thinking about what would happen if they reached Granny's house and Henry was in fact there. Regina pursed her lips for a moment. The sharp rush of relief and sadness that simultaneously struck at her chest confused her, and she shook her head to try and get rid of it.

Eventually Emma spoke up once more, still looking down at the dark stains of blood and dirt that covered her arms and clothes. 'It would be really nice if I could actually have a wash before then, though,' she said with a faint laugh. 'Henry won't be especially pleased to see us as it is – if I show up looking and smelling like the bottom of Pongo's basket then I'm thinking that getting a hug off of him is going to be even less likely.'

Regina smiled. 'Well, there's a stream right over there, dear. Help yourself.'

'Regina, the water's like two inches deep: as much as I'm sure you'd enjoy watching, I don't think me thrashing about in that is going to make a whole load of difference.'

A bark of laughter escaped from Regina's lips and she tilted her head back to the sky. Emma joined in, rolling her eyes as she returned to what was left of her food.

'I'm sure it'll meet a river at some point,' Regina finally offered, taking a drink of water. 'Don't worry. You'll be fresh and smelling of fake leather and alcohol again before you know it.'

Emma looked up, raising both of her eyebrows. 'Oh, thanks _so_ much,' she drawled out. 'By the way, apple trees can grow in this forest, can't they? Maybe we should find you a few. We can try and make you a real, organic shampoo to satisfy your apparent fetish for them. I can only assume that it's your withdrawal that's making you so crabby?'

The queen raised a sharp middle finger to the blonde woman and they both sniggered once more, finishing off what remained of their lunch. As she swallowed her last mouthful, Emma nodded to herself.

'That was terrible,' she said, wiping her hands free of bird grease on her knees.

'Agreed,' Regina replied, drinking some more water. 'So I suppose we should be grateful that we'll be at Granny's soon. We could be home sooner than we think.'

Emma nodded in response, but her heart wasn't in it. She was desperately looking forwards to seeing Henry again – she couldn't quite bring herself to think about him, in fact, because the pain of remembering that he wasn't near her made her heart ache dully for the few minutes that followed. But… finding Henry meant going back to Storybrooke. And Storybrooke was quite a different place to this forest, in so many ways.

As they wrapped up the rest of the bird and climbed back onto their horses, Regina threw an optimistic smile across at her. She returned it with half of its original fire. Her green eyes watched as the woman whom she had once punched in the face began to ride away, and shuddered at the sadness that washed over her. Storybrooke was a _hell_ of a lot different to this forest. Things changed in Storybrooke. She squeezed her heels against George's sides and let him catch up with her, her hand longing to reach out and grab Regina's, holding onto it tightly. Instead it sat lonely before her, where she knew it would be forced to remain the very second that they stepped foot back onto the hard concrete reality of Main Street, most likely never to hold it again.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

The dingy cottage finally appeared over the crest of the nearest hill. Regina forced a smile and gestured towards it, watching as Emma's eyes narrowed with something that closely resembled disappointment.

'Well. That's Granny's house.'

Emma shot a look across at her, taking in the tiny indents of a frown that was marking her forehead. She swallowed. Her hand tentatively reached out, resting on Regina's forearm and rubbing a small circle there to let her know that it was going to be okay: she didn't know how, but it would be okay. Regina smiled sadly in response, and the pair began to ride towards the nearby structure. Neither was sure whether their hearts were beating quite so frantically because they were nervous, or because they were breaking.

The broken windows and the splitting doorframes came into view only a moment later, and a sharp cry burst from Regina's mouth. The roof was partially caved in on one side, the crumbling foundations of the building turning to chalk beneath it. Even from their distance the women could both see the darkness that lay inside the shattered frame. As soon as they had reached it Emma tumbled down from her horse, running towards the front door as Regina struggled to disentangle herself from her horse's reins. The queen eventually dropped to her feet in between the two animals, watching as the blonde woman tore through the splintered door and threw herself over the threshold.

'It's empty,' Regina sighed to herself. She gently rested her dark head against her horse's warm side, closing her eyes for a moment. 'It's empty.'

Inside the house, Emma tripped over rotting chairs and crumbling floorboards as she scoured each room for a sign of her son. It quickly became apparent that no one had been here for a very long time: a thick pane of dust coated every surrounding surface, so densely that it was hardly disturbed even as the wind drained through the house's broken shell. Still she tore open door after door, a desperate trail of footsteps embedded in the dirt beneath her, calling out Henry's name.

As she was forced to admit defeat she automatically slammed her fist into a cracked wall, trapping her tongue between her teeth in order to stop herself from shouting out. The throbbing pain that followed was absolutely nothing compared to the havoc already being wreaked inside her battered chest.

She slowly turned herself back out onto the overgrown grass outside, not looking up at where Regina was waiting for her with the horses. Emma held her swollen knuckles against her lips as she walked, sucking at the blood and the ache until the red skin had deepened to a purple.

Regina was turned away from her, her hand pressed against the side of her horse as she looked down at the grass that was snaking about her riding boots. Emma approached with her usual heavy footsteps, keeping her own eyes fixed firmly on the ground rather than looking up at the woman whose shoulders were slumped forwards with exhaustion. Emma kept herself a few metres away from her, dragging her raw knuckles away from her mouth and kicking at the dirt between them.

'There's no one in there.'

Regina didn't respond. A bitter silence passed between the two women and Emma rolled her eyes to herself, yet again astounded by the stubbornness of the woman stood before her. Sure, she got that Regina was disappointed – she was too. Part of her had honestly thought that they would find their son in that desecrated house, bored and waiting for them, and then the three of them would ride off into the sunset and _somehow _find a way to get themselves back home again. Finding only the broken shell of what used to be someone's home, coated in grime and a blanket of dust, made her whole body seethe with irritation. Yet again it seemed like this whole damn forest was taunting her – snatching her son from her and sneaking him off, away from her sight and away from her arms. Emma gritted her teeth and forced herself to look up at Regina: underneath her dingy red coat her spine had tensed, and she still wasn't looking up at her.

'Regina,' Emma sighed, taking a step forwards. 'Did you hear me?'

She saw a small nod come from the dark head, barely noticeable had it not been for the fact that Emma was becoming more and more well-versed with every tick and flinch of Regina Mills's body. She frowned. Her booted feet took another step forwards and her bruised hand reached out for Regina's shoulder, slowly turning her around until Emma could see the frustrated tears that had been streaking down her cheeks ever since she had taken off into the broken house.

'Oh, Regina.' Emma's voice came out of her as barely more than a sigh as Regina rolled her eyes to the sky, not attempting to stop the tears from dripping down her cheeks. A bruised hand rose up between the pair of them and did it for her: the pad of Emma's thumb gently ran underneath the glassy, caramel eyes, smearing the warm salt away from her skin. The gap between the two women closed as Emma took Regina's face in both of her hands, the corners of her mouth desperately forcing themselves upwards. She planted a kiss so sad and small on Regina's lips that it was a little bit devastating. It was a kiss that felt like a full stop.

'What now?' The voice that came from Regina's throat cracked and sounded nothing like the woman that Emma knew. She seemed to have shrunk before her eyes. Her arms were hanging loosely by her sides and Emma knew how empty they must feel – she had expected to have her son back in them by now. Instead all she had was the warm air surrounding them, and an awkward blonde companion. Biting her lip, Emma moved forwards the last few inches and snaked her arms around Regina's neck, pulling her into a tentative hug that felt unnatural and gentle and shattering all at once. Regina choked back another sob, winding her arms around the blonde's narrow waist and squeezing her body against her in return. She closed her eyes against the chaos of blonde hair and listened to the silence around them – it was one that came from their failure to find their own son when he needed them to, and it screamed at her.

'We knew it was unlikely that he'd be here,' Emma eventually said, her voice calm. 'It's the first place we've looked. If he'd been here all this time then we really would've lucked out.'

Regina exhaled; her version of laughter. 'Given everything that's happened in the last few days, 'lucky' isn't really the term I would use to describe this. But I suppose you're right.'

She pulled away from the younger woman, sighing to herself. Tears still clung to her dark eyelashes and she made no move to brush them away, but her bottom lip wasn't jutting out quite so violently anymore. Emma offered her a small smile, taking her hands and squeezing them in her own.

'So,' she said, inhaling sharply to stop tears of her own from surfacing when Regina so badly needed her to be strong. 'How far until the next stop?'

Regina swallowed, looking down at where her fingers were laced indeterminably amongst the sheriff's. 'Another two or three days, perhaps.' She sighed once more, and then frowned. 'What did you do to your hand?'

Emma just shook her head, the pain from her swollen knuckles already receding against the restless irritation that the day's disappointment was causing her. 'I got angry.'

'Why am I not surprised?'

'Oh, I'm glad to see that your frustration hasn't lessened your ability to insult me. What a relief.'

Regina forced out a smile, running a hesitant thumb over the swollen skin as she did so. 'Is this another injury that I need to offer to heal only to be mercilessly shot down?'

'I think we're good on that front today.' Emma pulled her hand free and smiled weakly. 'It's fine. I promise.'

Regina noted to herself that Miss Swan did that a lot: promise things, even when it was obvious that she didn't mean them. She also noted how when she did so, it was never to protect herself – it was always to protect Regina.

'We should probably get going then,' Emma finally decided, patting her horse's flank with a wearied sigh. Her eyes rolled over to where Regina stood watching her and a surprising smirk broke out across her face. 'At least, if nothing else, this gives us another couple of days for that thing on your neck to heal.'

Regina's hand immediately shot up to her throat, her eyes taking in the dark bruises across Emma's own collarbone. She shuddered momentarily at what she must have looked like all day without realising.

Biting her lip, she allowed herself to smirk right back. 'You're a fine one to talk, Miss Swan. You know, you should really be more careful with who you let near that delicate little throat of yours.'

Emma's eyebrows shot up with surprise, and before she knew it she was laughing. The corners of Regina's eyes crinkled at the sound.

'Come on,' she said, remounting her horse and throwing a distasteful look at the cottage that had nothing to offer them. 'The dwarves' house eagerly awaits us, no doubt.'

Emma clambered back up onto her own horse's back, smiling. 'And I'm sure you can't _wait_ to get back there.'

'Back?' Regina asked, looking around at her.

'Yeah,' Emma replied, both of the women nudging their horses down the other side of the hill. 'You've been there before, haven't you? With an apple? Dressed as an old woman?'

It took a moment for Regina to register what she was talking about. When she finally understood – picturing her haggard Disney counterpart skulking around the windows of a tiny thatched cottage – she burst out laughing, her dark head thrown deliciously backwards.

'Oh _God_,' she cackled, Emma blinking with bewilderment. 'That is the most adorably ridiculous thing you've ever said.'

'What?' Emma spluttered. '_What? _I don't understand!'

'Those fools at Disney,' Regina said, running her hands through her hair. 'They've brainwashed you.'

'You mean that's not how it happened?' Emma asked. She sounded mildly disappointed.

'Emma,' Regina said, her eyebrows raised sardonically. 'Think about it. Can you really see me wearing an old robe with two vultures following me around? More to the point, can you can see your mother floating around baking pies for her dwarf friends and then being moronic enough to believe the strange old woman who comes along telling her to eat some mysterious fruit, because it's going to somehow grant her a wish?'

Emma's cheeks flushed. Picturing Snow, the Snow that she knew, doing anything that involved cooking or cleaning or singing at all was, plainly, ridiculous. 'No. I guess not.'

Regina continued to snigger as the horses walked on, picturing herself in the same disguise that she had once used to fool Jefferson and his daughter in order to try and trick Snow White into eating an apple. For some reason, it was wildly hilarious to her: Snow was stupid, but she wasn't _that_ stupid. Having said that, any time she had sat down with Henry to watch the Disney movie when he was younger, she had felt a small sneer of happiness playing about her lips whenever she saw what a pathetic, simpering mess of a princess they had chosen to portray Snow as. It was, ironically, the same useless idiot that had been born the moment that Regina's curse had rolled its way into Storybrooke.

'Regina?' The queen blinked, looking round to find that Emma had obviously been trying to get her attention for the last few moments. She shook her head.

'Sorry,' she said. 'What did you say?'

'I asked which way we're going,' Emma replied. They had reached the bottom of the hill, and a few breaks amongst the trees lay ahead of them. The tiny stream that they had been following was nowhere to be seen, but they could both hear the faint sound of rushing water up ahead.

Regina pictured the map in her mind, surprised at how well she still remembered the details of the land that it depicted. She pointed a finger to their left.

'That way,' she said, turning her horse. 'And, if I'm not mistaken, there should be a pleasant surprise for you in a couple of miles as well.'

Emma looked around excitedly. 'Really? What is it?'

'Don't get yourself too worked up, dear. It's not a Taco Bell.'

Emma rolled her eyes. 'No shit. But seriously – what is it?'

'You'll have to wait and see,' Regina smiled innocently. Emma groaned and turned her horse to follow her, pushing her lank hair out of her eyes.

As it was, Emma didn't have to wait long: they had barely been riding for another hour when the soft sound of the nearby stream began to grow progressively louder. Emma's green eyes narrowed as she looked about her, trying to seek out the source of the noise that was gradually turning into a dull roar. A few minutes later she caught a flash of light through the trees.

'Is that…?' she swallowed, forcing herself to fight back stupid tears. 'Is that a river? Like, an _actual _river?'

'I believe so,' Regina said, watching the pathetic relief that was flooding across her face. 'I thought you'd like it.'

'I'm actually going to cry,' Emma shook her head, tugging on George's reins until he started to make his way towards it. He too seemed to register the exquisite presence of real, clean water and began to move faster than he had done all day.

The river was only a few metres wide and would barely reach Emma's shoulders in depth, but compared to the miserable trickle of water that they'd been following for the past few days, it was an ocean. The moment that she had dismounted her horse and led him to the water's edge, Emma had begun tearing her clothes off in her frantic attempts to fall into the river and finally get clean again. Regina too slipped down from her horse's back, but remained tentatively by his side. She watched as Emma's body appeared from beneath her grimy clothes, her skin still peppered with bruises but somehow gloriously smooth in the sunlight that broke through the trees. When her upper body was uncovered, she sat down on a rock and began to tug her mud-soaked trousers from her legs. Regina couldn't tell whether she was stripping off so openly because she was quite that desperate to get into the water, or because the thought of Regina seeing her naked was simply no longer an issue.

To answer her unvoiced question, Emma looked up to where the dark-haired woman was watching her and grinned wickedly. 'You coming?'

Before Regina could answer, Emma tossed her bundle of clothes to the floor at her feet and slipped into the river, moaning out loud as the cold water lashed against her burning skin.

Actual tears filled her eyes as she tipped her head back, letting the water run about her body and whip through her matted hair. She crouched beneath the surface until the tide swept over the top of her head, her eyes firmly closed, her arms wrapped across her stomach. A soft mess of weeds and mud slipped about beneath her feet. She exhaled under the water, a stream of bubbles exploding from her lips and breaking against her face, before pushing herself back to the surface. Regina, who had been slowly removing her own jacket and boots, looked up at the sudden sound of laughter that erupted from the water.

'I am never leaving this river,' Emma shouted across at her, lying on her back and holding onto the bank to stop herself from drifting away. 'Go and find Henry by yourself. I'll just wait for you here.'

Regina gave a snort of laughter, unbuttoning her shirt and placing it on top of the neatly folded pile of the rest of her clothes. Emma's eyes quickly glanced over to her while she wasn't looking, taking in the taut lines of her thighs and stomach. Her own body was thin, but weak. She didn't look after it in the same way that Regina clearly did her own.

It was surprising to her, therefore, how self-conscious the mayor seemed to be about it. She was stood on the bank in only her underwear, biting her lip as she looked down at the water, obviously wondering whether to remove that too. She glanced up at where Emma's naked body lay on the surface of the river, the sunlight glinting off of her soft stomach, and sighed. Emma immediately pushed her feet back down to the river bed, looking up at the brunette with fiercely protective eyes.

'Regina,' she said, taking a few steps forwards until she was directly below her. 'Take that shit off and come join me. Now.'

Her tone was a mixture of threatening and inviting, and Regina shivered for a moment. She bit her lip, unable to take her eyes off of the sharp jut of Emma Swan's collar bone and the thick blanket of bruises that still covered it. Slowly, she reached behind her and unhooked her black bra. Emma didn't blink as she watched the last scraps of the queen's clothes leaving her body.

'Come on,' she said with a small smile, her arms outstretched and resting above the surface of the water. 'Don't make me drag you in.'

'I'd like to see you try,' Regina muttered in response, taking a cautious step down the steep bank and dipping her left foot into the cool water. She felt the firm grip of Emma's fingers around her wrist before she saw her coming, and before she could register the shock that was shooting through her body, she fell face-first into the water.

She erupted from below the surface a moment later, water streaming from her skin as she gasped for air and shouted profanities at the woman stood to her right. Emma giggled helplessly, unable to ignore the look of utter horror that was plastered across Regina's face but entirely unafraid of it – she looked like a child whose brother had just thrown a water balloon at her, and it was hysterically funny to witness her outrage. Regina ran her hands across her dripping face, still spluttering water from her mouth, and turned to face Emma. She found her still laughing, trying not to slip under the water as she clutched at her aching stomach.

'That was _not _funny!' Regina howled. Emma simply shook her head.

'It definitely was,' she eventually managed to choke out. Regina rolled her eyes, taking a cautious step towards the bank and clutching hold of the nearest branch that she found there for support.

'It was a _stupid _thing to do,' she grumbled, reaching up to sluice the water from her dark hair. Emma bit her lip, watching her indignant movements, the clear water clinging to the sharp dips below her shoulder blades. 'I could have easily landed on top of you. Or hit my head. Or slipped and—'

Her protests were swiftly cut off as Emma propelled herself through the water towards her, no longer laughing. Pressing the length of her body against the queen's, she pushed Regina flat against the bank and forced a hot kiss onto her lips. Her hands slowly slipped up to her dark hair, running her fingers through the wet locks and pulling her forwards so that she could attack her mouth with more vigour. The breath in Regina's lungs fell flat as she reached for Emma's waist below the water, tugging her hips towards her until every inch of the blonde's body was pressed fiercely against her own.

Emma laced her fingers more tightly through Regina's hair and pulled down, forcing the queen's head back so that she could plant a kiss against the hollow of her throat. Regina moaned softly, letting her hands run higher up Emma's back so that her nails could dig into the skin that she found there. Emma moved her mouth lower, slipping her tongue out and dragging it across the cavern beneath Regina's collar bone. She sucked against the pale skin, dragging the queen's racing blood to the surface and biting down as soon as it reached her. Regina gasped, her nails raking down the blonde's back, pulling her closer to her with her head thrown back against the muddy embankment.

Emma's leg had slipped between her own and she could feel it grinding against her there, the slow rush of surrounding water doing nothing to distract her from the feeling of heavy flesh pressing against her. She was achingly aware of the frantic pulsing of her clit and she yearned to reach a hand down into the water to appease it. Instead she pushed Emma away from her, pulling down on her own blonde hair and attacking the fragile skin beneath her ear with double the force that she had intended. She felt Emma's throat vibrate beneath her lips as she moaned out loud, pressing her thigh more forcefully between the queen's legs and supressing a grin as she felt her whimper in response. She could never grow tired of the sound of Regina's groans – the feel of her chest heaving against her own and the sight of her dark eyes turning to molten chocolate was deliciously dangerous to her. Watching the cold-hearted mayor of Storybrooke come completely undone sent her heart racing and her palms sweating. She remembered the scream that had erupted from Regina's lips the previous night; the shout of _her _name as she'd forced her back to arch and her toes to curl and the sheets about them to be thrashed wildly across the floor until tears of exhaustion had been streaming down the queen's burning cheeks. Emma has licked that salty water away and, in Regina's eyes, all she had seen was a scorching but terrified desire for more. As she moved against her writhing body in the water, trapping her against the bank, she fully realised just how badly she wanted to give it to her.

Emma tugged Regina over to a lower part of the riverside and hauled her body upon onto it, not taking her eyes off of the queen's face even as the water coursed down her heaving chest and stomach. Regina looked down at her, already struggling to catch her breath as she witnessed the tiny smile that began to appear on Emma's lips. The blonde coolly raised an eyebrow, then reached out for the thighs that were resting at her eye level. She forced them apart, staring into the hot, aching core of the queen, before drawing a lengthy trail of burning kisses along the inside of her leg on her path to meet it with her tongue.

Regina's head snapped backwards in a desperate groan the moment that the blonde's lips met the folds between her legs. Emma's hands crept slowly up her thighs, her tongue darting and out her nails scraping against the soft flesh before finally seeking home against the queen's hips. She tugged her closer to her mouth, drawing her tongue around Regina's clit and gently sucking until she could feel the brunette's body begin to tremble and lurch against her. Regina laced one hand through the blonde's hair, fiercely digging her nails into her scalp as she tried to pull her closer, or push her away, or force her to stop, or beg her to never ever cease as long as she should live. The surrounding forest became a watercolour haze in her dark eyes and she had to shut them, focusing every single sense in her body on the feeling of Emma's hot breath between her legs and the spark of each nerve as they ignited and writhed and exploded beneath her skin.

Emma could hear the frantic pants that were escaping from the queen's throat and she squeezed her own legs together beneath the water, dragging her tongue more vigorously against Regina's core as the moans got louder. They echoed through the quiet forest and Regina bit at her lip, begging herself to be quiet, until Emma suddenly thrust a finger deep inside her and she exploded with it. The one arm that had been holding her up collapsed and she fell back against the bank, her chest heaving and her spine curving upwards as she pressed her thighs angrily around the blonde woman's head. Her moans continued to rasp through the air and Emma smirked against her skin, letting her nails pierce the flesh of the queen's hips as she slipped another finger inside her. She let it grind against Regina's clit as it entered, and a sudden howl erupted from Regina's lips. Her head thrashed from side to side and her whole body shook against the bank, her fingers tangled so violently through Emma's hair that she wasn't able to pull away from her, even if either of them had wanted her to.

* * *

Still wet from the river and wearing her spare set of clothes, Emma strung the quiver of arrows across her back and bent down to press her lips against Regina's.

'I'll go and find us something else to eat,' she said, smiling at the deep blush that hadn't quite left the queen's cheeks yet. 'I'll be back in a little while.'

Regina, who had been sat with her feet dangling in the river as she tried to scrub some of the mud from their other clothes, looked up with a small smile. 'Okay. Don't be too long.'

The corners of Emma's eyes crinkled slightly, and then she disappeared through the trees. Regina watched her go.

Having ridden through the forest with Emma by her side all morning, it had left very little time for Regina to actually think about what they were doing together. Even when she'd woken up that morning wrapped in a blind panic, she hadn't really considered her reasoning – it had just… happened. And she had enjoyed it.

But as Regina watched the mop of wet, blonde curls vanishing amongst the leaves, she felt her world tilt around her. The stupid smile that was tugging at the corners of her mouth suddenly felt foreign and she froze, losing her grip on the jacket that was clutched between her fingers and letting it slip into the water around her feet. The realisation of what was happening had crept up on her slowly and then hit her all at once: she realised it with a gasp. She realised that she _cared _about Emma. She didn't just find her attractive in the way that she had felt about Graham, and she didn't feel the giddy, schoolgirl rush of love for her like she had with Daniel. But she cared about her. She felt safe around her and she enjoyed the irritation of letting her dig her way under her skin, and the moment that she had disappeared into the trees, Regina realised that she had begun to miss her. She had begun to miss Emma Swan.

She reached into the water and pulled Emma's jacket back out, swallowing against the hard lump that was forming in her throat.

Emma had bent down to give her a goodbye kiss, and she had let her: such a weak little gesture that she hadn't experienced since Daniel had died. And then, what they'd done on the riverbank… she had never experienced that at all. Someone else forcing pleasure onto her and then asking for absolutely nothing in return once it was over – she'd had several partners through her life, and she wasn't going to pretend that she hadn't enjoyed most of them. But this had been different to every single one of them.

Daniel's face suddenly shone before her eyes and she shook her head fiercely, trying to push it away.

_I love you_.

He had meant everything to her, and then he had been snatched away. Her whole life, gone in an instant; in a flash of red and a flurry of dust.

She flung the jacket to the floor, lying back on the ground with her hands pressed over her eyes.

_Then love again_.

The noise that came from her throat sounded barely human. Furious tears pricked at her eyes as she violently shook her head, begging Daniel to leave her alone, begging Emma Swan to stop mattering to her.

_I can't love again. I can't love at all_.

_I can't cause another heart to be destroyed_.

And yet, when Emma returned to the clearing half an hour later, Regina didn't let a word escape from her mouth before she had pushed her desperately against a tree, the breath sucked out of the blonde's mouth by the fierce lips that came down upon them.


	13. Chapter 13

_Three quick little notes my dearies! Just skip ahead if you don't give a shit._

_One: sorry for the slight delay in this chapter - my uni work has grown teeth and claws and is angry at me for ignoring it so I had to succumb for a little while._

_Two: I've had a few people on tumblr requesting fics from me, which I am SO HAPPY about! I will start doing these ASAP (well, once aforementioned uni work is finished, so maybe at the end of May...) but if anyone else has any ideas then just ask, on here or on tumblr (user **beerrrrr**) _

_Three: in case you're interested, I was listening to the following 3 songs while I wrote pretty much this whole chapter, so if you want to get proper in the zone then maybe put them on while you read :) 'Demons' by Imagine Dragons (thanks Lana...); 'Cold Desert' by Kings of Leon; 'Hand Me Downs' by Kelly Clarkson_

_All my love, as usual xxxx_

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

Henry didn't jump as Robert's dark silhouette appeared against his bedroom window. Rather, he felt his face drop into a profoundly bored frown at how repetitive this whole routine had already become. Robert was the only man he knew from this world, and he was a disappointment. He was no hero. Heroes from this land should arrive on horseback, brandishing a sword and a warming catchphrase – Robert, on the other hand, skulked about in the shadows like an overdramatized cartoon villain, and Henry didn't want to see him there. His suspicion was burning a hole in his stomach and he didn't want to be anywhere near him until he could work out exactly what it was that the man wanted from him.

'I'm about to have lunch,' the young boy mumbled as a greeting. Robert's expression didn't change.

'I thought you might like to have another lesson. With animals, this time.'

'Animals?'

'Yes,' Robert snorted with derision at Henry's surprise. 'Wooden targets aren't exactly useful in the real world, boy. If you want to be a hunter then you need to learn how to_ hunt_.'

'I don't want to be a hunter,' Henry said, folding his arms over his chest. Robert raised an eyebrow, leaning further into the room.

'You don't?'

'No.'

'Then why have you been coming to me?'

'I want to learn how to shoot,' Henry shrugged. 'But I don't want to shoot animals. I don't want to kill things for fun.'

'What about for _food_, Henry?' The man appeared to be growing larger before Henry's eyes, a dark storm gathering across his heavy brow. The boy, however, remained unwavering.

'We already have food,' Henry said flatly. 'But when we need more, I'm sure I can work the rest out.'

A silence drew out between the two figures as Robert narrowed his eyes, cutting his jaw into a tight line and taking in what the boy was really saying. 'You mean, you don't want lessons any more?'

Henry gave a small shake of his head. 'No. I don't think I do.'

'And why is _that_, I wonder?'

Unable to explain the real reason to him, Henry shrugged once more. 'You've taught me plenty, and I want to spend more time with Red and with—'

'Bullshit,' Robert suddenly snapped, his eyes burning with a black fire. 'Absolute _bullshit_. You think I'll stand here and believe that, after _three_ lessons, you already feel like you know enough about this to not need me anymore?'

'I can shoot,' Henry ground out. 'I'm good at it.'

'You're a kid,' Robert sneered.

'Yeah. And I'm still better at it than you are.'

For the first time since they'd met Robert found his jaw snapping shut in surprise, eyeing the narrowed glare on Henry's face and immediately recognising the same fire that the Evil Queen had always burned throughout her kingdom. Any remaining doubts over the boy's parentage, biological or otherwise, disappeared like a wisp of smoke. The enormous man gave a low, throaty chuckle and rapped his hammy knuckles against the window frame.

'So sure of yourself, aren't you, boy?' His voice was low, almost a vibration rather than a sound. 'The second that someone steps in and shows you how to do something, you're suddenly certain that you don't need them anymore. The moment that someone comes along to actually look _after _you – you decide you don't want them to.' He tilted his head to one side as he watched the dark flush that was spreading across the boy's cheeks. 'No doubt that's what you did to Mommy dearest – let her raise you, and then pushed her away. Let her in, and then shut her out.'

'You know _nothing_ about my mom,' Henry protested, but Robert only laughed once more.

'But I know _plenty _about you – you're lonely, and you're desperate. Desperate to be a hero in a world full of villains. But you see, Henry, here's the problem: being a hero is hard enough, but it's damn near impossible when you yourself come from a family full of bad guys.'

A flash of anger shot through Henry's eyes.

'You were raised by the Evil Queen,' Robert continued coolly, 'after being abandoned by your own sad, desperate parents. Cast aside by weaklings to be brought up by a villain. What does that make you, Henry? Tell me how _that _makes you a hero?'

'You know _nothing_!' Henry exploded, taking a step towards the window with angry tears snapping at his eyes. '_Nothing_! You don't know my mom, or Emma, or _me_. I am not a villain and I am not desperate, and I am _not _seeing you any more. I never want to see you again!'

The door behind him suddenly burst open. Having followed the sounds of their shouting, Granny appeared in the doorway surrounded by three of the dwarves and several axes. The moment that they spotted Robert, they froze. Granny's arms were empty of her crossbow and, without it, it was clear what she was: an old woman, incapable of harm. Robert snorted to himself, then turned his eyes back to Henry.

'You want to stay here with this lot?' he asked, the words dripping off of his tongue. 'These people who want you to stay indoors and never be a real man? Fine. _Fine,_ Henry. Keep that damn bow and never use it, because they'll never let you. Stay in your room and watch the world turn, and never change anything. But if you change your mind – if you actually want to make something of yourself – if you want to make _someone _proud of you… then you know where I'll be.'

He threw a final, hateful look towards the small crowd that had gathered in the doorway, and then he turned away. He disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

Before a word could be said to the tearful boy, the door was slammed shut in their faces and angry sobs could be heard spilling out from under it.

'I _hate this place_!'

They heard his words even as he smothered his face into his pillow, trying to drown himself out. His fingers curled automatically around the photograph that lay beneath it: one of Sidney's. One that Henry had found in the Mayor's office on his hunt for her keys, and he had kept for months because he knew it was the only photo that he was ever likely to have of him and both of his mothers in the same place.

In it they were arguing, and he was stood awkwardly between them. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter because they weren't there with him now and he hated them for it.

He scrunched the photo more tightly in his fist as he howled. The glossy paper bent beneath his fingers and the faces of his mothers were crushed with it, pressing into his palm, dented beneath his nails. But he didn't let go of it. He didn't push them away again. He hated them and he waited for them, feeling a vile burn deep within his chest as he begged them to come and rescue him. He didn't let go of the photo. It was all he had left. He couldn't let go.

* * *

Emma could feel the tip of Regina's finger tracing the outlines of the bruises that were still clouding her shoulders. Laying down on the bank of the river with only their unbuttoned shirts covering them, Regina had coiled her body up against Emma's back, her nose pressed into the damp blonde curls. The sun beat down on them, piercing through the surrounding leaves and making the skin on Emma's nose and cheeks begin to freckle. From her position behind her Regina could only see one or two of the growing marks, and so she pushed herself onto an elbow in order to press a kiss onto the rest of them. Emma's lips creased into a smile and she turned her head, looking up at where Regina was hanging over her.

She quickly noticed that the brunette wasn't smiling back. 'What's wrong?'

The queen immediately raised her eyebrows, plastering a grin onto her reddened lips. 'Nothing. Why would anything be wrong?'

'You look strange,' Emma said slowly, rolling onto her back so that she could look up at her properly. Her forehead furrowed into a frown as she allowed her green eyes to flick across Regina's face.

'Thanks so much,' Regina said dryly, reaching out to brush a stray curl from Emma's face. She was trying to ignore the feeling in her stomach – the hollow sensation that somehow felt both warm and cold at the same time. But every time she looked down at Emma's concerned face she could feel the fingers of anxiety squeezing more tightly around her. The smile that she had sewn onto her lips gradually began to drop and Emma sighed, pushing herself up onto her elbows until her face was only inches away from Regina's.

'I've been worrying about going home too, you know,' she said.

Regina wet her lips and, after a pause, replied, 'Really?'

'Of course,' Emma said, wrinkling her nose. 'If… _when _we manage to get back there… things are going to be different. Not to mention difficult. It's going to be so much harder to do this when other people start sticking their noses in.'

The blonde watched as Regina's body visibly tensed up. 'So you… you think we'll still be doing this when we get back?'

Emma blinked. 'Of course I do,' she said slowly. 'Why? Don't you?'

Regina smiled tightly and forced herself to nod. There was a sadness seeping through her caramel eyes, however, and Emma watched its destructive path with her jaw set in a tight line.

'Regina,' she said in a low voice. 'If you're regretting this. If you're having second thoughts, then—'

'No,' Regina interrupted, leaning forwards so that she could rest her forehead against Emma's. 'I'm sorry. Of course I'm not. It's just… it's… it's difficult, Emma.'

'Because of Henry?'

'Because of everyone.' The queen let her body fall back down onto the ground next to Emma, looking up at the blinding sky with unblinking eyes. 'Because of Henry. Because of your parents. Because of… because of me.'

It was Emma's turn to sit upright. Crossing her legs beneath her, she reached out to run a line across Regina's exposed stomach with the tip of her finger. A white trail blazed against the taut muscles and she saw the queen inhale sharply, shivering under her touch.

'Because of you?' Emma's voice was disbelieving, but a tinge of sadness ran through it. 'Jesus, Regina. Do you remember who you're talking to? Do you have _any _idea how unlucky I've been in relationships so far?'

Regina pushed herself back up onto her elbows, letting out the breath that she'd been holding. 'I know. But, Emma, I—'

'I get it,' Emma interrupted, reaching forwards to brush Regina's wet hair away from her face. 'Look. We've both had a rough time and neither of us are particularly good with the whole trust thing. Neither of us are ready to get hurt again because I think… I think if either one of our hearts broke right now, it would pretty much destroy us.'

As Emma moved to fiddle with another dark curl, Regina's own hand shot up to catch hers. Her eyes were glassy with tears as she tangled her fingers through the blonde's, pulling her hand to her lips so that she could press a kiss there. Emma smiled sadly, shaking her head.

'If moving to Storybrooke taught me anything, Regina – anything at all – it's that, sometimes, doing the scariest thing imaginable can turn out to be the best decision you'll ever make. I took a massive leap when I left Boston and, although having to be a mom still terrifies the _crap_ out of me, I haven't regretted it for a second. It forced me to grow up, but it also brought happiness into my life for the first time since…' Her sentence teetered off into nothing, and she shook her head to herself. Regina watched her with dark, sad eyes.

Eventually Emma forced herself to smile again. It was tiny and it was pathetic, and it stopped Regina from breathing.

'I'm not going to break your heart, Regina.'

The thought surprised her. The queen swallowed, fighting back stupid tears, before she forced herself to spit out the words that had been choking her all day.

'I know that. I'm just worried that I might break yours.'

* * *

As the light left the sky that evening with the two women moving through the forest on exhausted horseback, there was a strange silence between them. Regina's dark eyes were filled with a sadness that threatened to spill down her cheeks every time that she blinked. She hadn't responded to a single one of Emma's questions since they'd left the river bank behind them hours earlier.

Now Emma's lips were set in the same tight line that Storybrooke had known so well and, although she still rode alongside Regina's horse, her eyes remained firmly on the ground before her. Any glances she had made towards her companion earlier on in the afternoon had only told her two things: one, that Regina was panicking. And two, that Emma had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to snap her out of it.

Eventually, as the sun began to drop behind the outline of the trees, Emma forced herself to speak.

'Do you think we should stop to camp now?' she asked tentatively. It was already much later than they had stopped on previous days, but she had been putting off asking up until then. In response to her question Regina forced a tight smile and nodded, allowing herself to be led over to the nearest patch of grass without saying a word. Emma jumped down from her horse, biting her lip as she watched Regina struggling down from her own.

'Shall I set up the fire?' Emma asked quietly, running a hand over George's matted mane. Regina looked round at her.

'Okay,' she replied, pulling the tents from the saddle bags and turning towards the nearest tree with Emma wordlessly watching her. After a moment the blonde blinked, realising that Regina was setting up not one, but both of them.

'Regina?' she asked. The brunette turned to face her, but didn't lift her eyes from the ground.

'Yes?'

'Are you planning on talking to me again?' Emma took a step towards her, her hands pushed deep into the pockets of her jacket. Regina's gaze flicked up momentarily, and she weakly smiled.

'I am talking to you,' she said. 'I just need to set up the tents.'

'Both of them?'

Regina looked down at the open sheets on the floor beside her and paused for a moment. 'Well. I don't… I just thought—'

'You know what,' Emma interrupted, shaking her head. 'Fine – go ahead. I get it.' She turned her back on the queen and began to move further into the forest. 'I'll just do the fire, then.'

Regina couldn't miss the sad bite to her voice, but she still didn't say anything in response. It made her chest ache to watch those tense shoulders turning away from her, but she forced herself not to react. She forced herself to let her go.

It was harder than she'd anticipated to set up the tents with tears stinging at her eyes, and the whole endeavour took her twice as long as it had taken Emma on their first night. The blonde, meanwhile, had torn a small pile of sticks and branches from the surrounding trees and was sat cross-legged on the ground beside it, carefully ensuring that her back was to Regina the whole time. She didn't want the queen to see the deep, hurt lines that she could feel forming on her forehead.

The pile of kindling eventually reached a suitable size and Emma grappled about in her bag for the flint, sighing all the while. The small object alluded her for some time, and with every passing second she could feel the tendons in her neck and jaw growing tighter and tighter until she thought they might snap straight through her skin. Throwing the bag back down to the ground, she groaned to herself and leant back against the tree that sat behind her. The night was closing in around them and she could feel tiny shards of cold air pricking at the exposed skin of her chest and arms. She looked down at the unburning fire. She sighed. And then she held out her hand and attempted to break her own, single rule.

She knew that she had magic within her – she'd used it twice now, to startling success. The most recent occurrence had, granted, required the somewhat disconcerting help of Mr Gold and his suspicious dream-catcher – but the first time that she'd used it it had been of her own will. And it had been by accident. She remembered with a faint smile how just touching Regina's arm on the very first day of magic coming to Storybrooke had not only made Jefferson's useless hat work, but had also sent three separate beings into another world entirely. She knew that she had magic, and she knew that it was powerful enough to light a fire. She just didn't know how the hell to get it to work.

She glanced behind her, making sure that Regina was still busy struggling with the damn tents, before holding out both of her hands to the mess of sticks before her. Closing her eyes and thinking about what she needed, she waited for the flames to spring from her hands. After several moments, nothing had happened. She opened her eyes and frowned, letting her fists drop down into her lap. She tried summoning the fire with just her eyes, glaring into the kindling until her head started to ache. The air around her remained cold and unlit, and suddenly she was even more frustrated than she had been when she couldn't find the flint.

_You can use magic? _Emma remembered Regina's broken expression that day on her Storybrooke doorstep. Her disappointment. She then remembered the rage that had flooded through the mayor's dark eyes only seconds later, causing her to reach out and push the blonde woman ten feet away without even registering what she was doing. Emma blinked, thinking about this for a moment – Regina had gotten angry, and then she had gotten magical. She thought back again to when she had made the hat work and bit her lip, remembering the fear and the panic and the desperation that had been coursing through her veins in the moment when she had, for no reason that she could recall, reached out and grabbed Regina's arm. Magic had flooded through her. Magic had come from her frazzled, angry emotions and sent the hat spinning across the floor.

She held out her hands again and took a deep breath, closing her eyes to the darkening forest. She pictured the one thing that had the ability to make her angry: the frustrating woman who was at that moment sat only feet away from her.

She felt the buzzing in her palms after only a few seconds and her eyes snapped back open, looking down at the pile of sticks before her. A tiny plume of smoke was rising from the centre of it. She leaned forwards, her nose almost burying itself in the kindling, and saw that a tiny flame had sprung up inside of it. Blowing on it gently, the fire spread. The clearing was soon filled with the warm light of the blaze, and she grinned to herself.

'The "no magic" rule lost its appeal then did it, dear?'

Emma's head snapped around to find Regina stood three feet away, her arms hanging awkwardly by her sides. She didn't look angry – she almost looked proud. But painted over the top of that was a film of bitter disappointment, and Emma's grin quickly slipped from her face.

'I…' she swallowed. 'I couldn't find the flint.'

'It's here,' Regina said, holding it up for her to see. 'It was in my bag.'

'Oh. Right.' Emma could only stare up at her, waiting for her to say something else. When she didn't, she sighed. 'I'm sorry, Regina. I didn't think—'

'No. I can see that.'

Emma's green eyes flashed with annoyance. 'What did you want me to do? We could have lost the damn thing – would you rather that we spend the night freezing to death rather than me attempt a stupid bit of magic by myself?'

'I don't know, dear; would you rather martyr yourself with a ruined shoulder for three days rather than let me attempt to stupidly heal you?' Regina sat down on the other side of the fire with a heavy thud. She sighed. 'It's interesting: there always seems to be one rule for me and another for the Charmings, doesn't there?'

Annoyingly, Emma knew that she was right: she had insisted on not using magic for a reason, and then she had weakly broken her own rule because of a single moment of frustration. Even after she had watched Regina trying so hard to not break it herself. But, above this thought, the irritation of the rest of the evening still hung about her and, instead of apologising once more, she simply rolled her eyes.

'Whining really doesn't suit you you know,' she snapped, standing up to go and collect the two birds that she'd shot down by the river earlier that afternoon from the bags. 'And you don't even have the _right_ to be annoyed at me right now – you've been blocking me out all afternoon. I should be madly pissed off at _you_.'

'And as I can see from the welcome return of your colourful language, you're clearly not,' Regina scoffed. Her heart was beating in a strangely erratic rhythm, but she forced herself to ignore it. She leaned back against the nearest tree and sighed.

'As usual, you know me _so_ well,' Emma spat as she returned to the fire, attaching the gutted animals to a branch with more vigour than was necessary. 'Well enough to know that, once I've told you that I care about you enough to never want to break your heart, the thing that I will appreciate most is for you to not talk to me again for _four fucking hours_.'

'Stop pouting,' Regina said simply, closing her eyes. Emma's anger was justified, and made her feel strangely better – this bickering was comfortable to her, and she knew how to deal with it. She knew that it would end with them sleeping in separate tents and with Emma resenting her for a few days, and that was safe. That was sensible.

'I'm not a child!' Emma exploded, throwing her hands in the air. She looked over to see that the queen's eyes were closed, clearly trying to block her out, and she let out a strangled scream. Stabbing the branch with the birds on it into the ground so that they hung over the flames, she pushed herself to her feet. 'I just don't _get _you, Regina. The last few days have been so good, so fucking _right_, and then out of nowhere you do this. I just don't know what you want from me. You know, you can only push me so far before I'll stop coming back.'

Regina swallowed. She wanted to open her eyes, but she couldn't – tears would spill out the second that she did, and Emma could not be there to see that.

'I'm suddenly not hungry,' Emma said flatly, beginning to walk over to the poorly constructed tents. 'Make your own goddamn dinner.'

She strode with purpose, but still she waited for the sound of Regina's voice calling her back. She didn't hear it. Angry tears were flooding down her cheeks the moment that she threw herself into her tent, not registering that unlike their first night in the forest, she was the one who had all of the thick blankets.

* * *

Regina didn't think that she would be able to sleep, and yet after an hour or two of tossing and turning in her empty tent, she did. As she slept she dreamt of Henry: she saw him greeting the pair of them somewhere within this very forest, his arms outstretched and his face beaming. He ran to hug Emma, tears racing down his flushed cheeks. The blonde woman bent down to meet him and he buried his face in her hair. Regina waited for him to notice her. Eventually his eyes opened and he caught sight of her, stood patiently, her hand resting nervously at the base of her throat. He didn't say a word, but he beckoned her over. Falling to her knees at Emma's side, she wrapped her arms around the pair of them, smelling the familiar scent of the woman who'd stolen her heart and the young boy who'd had it all along.

A sudden pressure on her waist jolted her awake, and her tearful eyes snapped open. She could hear rustling. She blinked to herself for a moment, taking a breath to try and remember where she was. It was then that she felt the soft breath of Emma Swan against the back of her neck, her arms wrapped firmly around her stomach. A cool breeze had followed her as she had snuck into the tent, clinging onto the thin fabric of the tank top that she still insisted on wearing. A wetness on Regina's shoulder told her that she was crying as well.

Without a word the queen slipped her arms below the blankets, grabbing hold of Emma's wrists and tugging them more tightly about her waist. She heard a muffled sob from behind her, and a swift kiss was planted on the jut of her shoulder blade. The blonde curled her body more closely about the brunette's, letting her legs slot into place in the space behind her knees, and gradually she fell still. Regina squeezed her eyes shut once more, not wiping the tears away, and not wanting to go back to sleep just yet.


	14. Chapter 14

_Hello my beauties! Just FYI, the song that I was listening to while writing the majority of this chapter was 'Bleeding Out' by Imagine Dragons. Fucking cracker of a tune. Go get it._

_Love and hugs xxx_

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

The arrow whistled through the air, sailing towards the broken branch that Henry's narrowed eyes had spotted. A moment later the sharp tip was buried deep in the hard knot of wood that scarred its surface. Henry watched as it juddered to a halt, vibrating amongst the surrounding leaves. He didn't smile. Looking about him, he counted each of the arrows that he'd shot in the last half an hour; every one of them reaching an increasingly smaller or more challenging target without difficulty. His arms didn't even shake any more. He knew that he should be pleased, that he should be proud of what he could do with his new weapon – but his heart was heavy, and his bones ached with a miserable exhaustion. The sight of an arrow easily reaching its target had already lost all of its former joy.

He dragged his eyes over the surrounding trees and sighed. Inside the house, he felt suffocated. Out here, however, it was even worse: loneliness was creeping in on him and every branch that hung down seemed to point at him, sneering at his awkwardness and the fact that the very world that he'd been dreaming of being a part of for years had already let him down. Instead of finding out that there is no Santa, it felt like finding out that there is in fact a Mr S. Claus, but who is overweight, crabby, hates children and smells faintly of stale alcohol. A whole world that he had been imagining and doodling and pining after was fake and disappointing, and walking through it was becoming physically painful to him.

Tearing each and every one of those arrows down from where they had landed, Henry hung his bow back across his shoulders and began to trail back towards the dwarves' cottage. His heavy footsteps echoed his mother's. He kept his head down.

'Jesus. He _is _good at that, isn't he?'

Robert rolled his eyes, not looking over at where Arthur was perched in the branches next to him. The boy passed directly below them, his forehead creased as he looped his thumbs beneath the string of his bow.

'He's the grandson of Snow White and Prince fucking Charming,' Robert muttered in response, watching as Henry clambered over a log and broke out into the clearing that encompassed the nearby cottage. 'Of course he's good at it.'

In the tree next to Robert's, another voice spoke up. 'You're still sure that someone's going to come looking for him?'

Adjusting the green peaked hat that he had rammed onto his head that morning, Robert nodded. 'Positive,' he said. He continued watching as Henry walked with his shoulders slumped forwards, a single blot on the otherwise deserted ground. 'Look at him, boys: he's depressed. And anyone who knows him at all will realise that he needs someone besides that batty old woman and a bunch of midgets to make him happy again – so they'll be coming soon. They'll want to make sure he's safe, and they'll come for him. I'm sure of it.'

A pause followed his words before Arthur spoke up again. 'And how will you get him away from the cottage at the right time?'

Robert motioned around him, at the tall trees where three of their company of nine sat watching the boy. 'We simply need to stay alert. I've got the others stationed further into the forest: the rest of us will keep an eye on the house. Rest assured, the moment that someone else enters these woods – we'll know about it. And then we'll go and get the child.'

Arthur nodded, looking back to Henry just as he reached the cottage. Struggling with the heavy door, he hefted his body forwards and then finally disappeared from sight. A smirk came over Robert's face.

'Make sure that you've got all of the weapons ready,' he said in a low voice, holding an arrow between his knees and slowly running a thumb over the glowing tip. 'And the ropes. There's going to be a struggle.'

* * *

The afternoon came and brought a greyness with it, the clouds hanging low amongst the trees. Emma and Regina rode side by side, the silence that they had woken up in following them all the while. They didn't look at one another. Regina instead cast her gaze across the surrounding trees, taking in various landmarks and eventually tracking their whereabouts to being less than a day away from the dwarves' cottage. She didn't allow herself to consider that their journey might end there – a heavy sadness was already thudding against her chest, one that she felt more so now than she had done when they had reached Granny's the day before.

They stopped for lunch later than they normally did, and Emma quickly found that she still wasn't hungry. Pushing her food to one side, she leaned forwards with her green eyes pinned onto Regina's expressionless face. When the brunette looked up at her, Emma forced a smile.

'Do you remember the first time that we met?'

The question was abrupt, and Regina blinked uncertainly. 'Of course I do,' she said slowly. 'How could I forget?'

The corners of Emma's eyes crinkled slightly.

'I was so scared of you,' she said, almost laughing. 'Not because you were some big, terrifying Evil Queen. But because from the moment you came out of that house, you just _were_. I managed to forget all about Henry for that split second because you were right there, right in my face, and all I could think about was how good you looked in that damn dress. And that scared the _hell_ out of me.'

Regina could feel her lips twisting into a smile without her telling them to. 'Oh yes?'

Emma rolled her eyes, still chuckling. 'You had me from day one, Madame Mayor.'

A short, wistful laugh escaped from Regina's lips and the pain in her chest momentarily subsided. Sitting amongst the greyness of the afternoon Emma's blonde hair glowed almost golden, and Regina found that she couldn't take her eyes off of it. Emma watched her in return, her young face breaking into a hopeful smile as she waited for the brunette to respond. But Regina only fell silent. She looked into those expectant green eyes, and she felt her heart shatter.

Because, ultimately, she knew that this wouldn't work: none of this could _ever_ work. No matter how much she had grown to care for Emma, or how much she missed her when she wasn't there for five minutes, or how much she found herself wanting to tell her about the tiniest things that had happened to her in her absence; like how that morning she'd been so exhausted that she'd almost poured their horses wine instead of water, and how the day before she'd seen a flower that was somehow the exact same green-blue colour of Emma's questioning eyes and she'd so desperately wanted to pick it for her, but had lost her nerve at the last minute because she wasn't sure whether the broken foster child in Emma would love it or laugh at it.

Loneliness had followed Regina like a shadow for most of her life, and even when it had felt like it was about to smother her, she knew that it was safer that way. Because, before then, she had only ever had two experiences of real love: first with Daniel, and then with Henry. And all that she had learned from them was that she really didn't know how to love at all. She loved too hard and she pulled too hard, and she ruined everything. That was how she loved everything: completely, and aggressively. The blonde woman with creases between her eyebrows simply couldn't understand how dangerous that was to her.

'This…' Regina faltered momentarily, unable to look up as she spoke. 'This has to end, Miss Swan.'

Emma blinked. 'Since when did we go back to "Miss Swan"?'

'I mean it,' Regina said, pushing her own food to one side. 'What we're doing… it needs to stop. We can't keep going on like this, pretending that it's okay.'

'But it is okay,' Emma spluttered, leaning further forwards, waiting for Regina to meet her eyes. 'Regina. What the hell? What's going on?'

'I've just had time to think,' the queen said with a shrug that would have looked casual had it not been for the fact that Emma knew her better than she gave her credit for. 'And it's just becoming clear to me… What we've been doing was reckless and, yes, arguably, it was fun – but it was temporary. And it needs to stop now. For Henry's sake.'

'This has got _nothing _to do with Henry, Regina!' Emma snapped. She waited for a bitten response; a sign that the Regina she knew was still there – but instead, Regina gradually began to stand up and, without a look in her direction, turned away. '_Regina_! Do not _dare_ walk away from me! We need to talk about this.'

Not saying another word, Regina began to walk away anyway. She didn't know where she was going or what on earth she was planning to say to Emma once she returned. She just knew that she needed to get away from there, from Emma Swan's shattered expression, so that she could find somewhere quiet and cry and cry and cry until she was empty once more.

It didn't occur to her that Emma might follow her until she felt an angry hand on her shoulder only a minute later, spinning her around and slamming her body back against a tree. Emma's own face was streaked with furious tears, her blonde hair a crazed mess billowing down her spine.

'Miss Swan,' Regina spluttered, forcing herself to stop crying so that she could attempt to look outraged. 'Get off of me.'

'How fucking _dare _you,' Emma hissed at her, both of her hands clinging desperately onto the queen's forearms as she pushed her back against the tree. 'You _let_ me fall for you – you let me think that you had changed.'

'I did nothing of the sort,' Regina replied. She wrestled with her own voice, trying to get it under control and regain the same cool disdain that the Mayor of Storybrooke had mastered so effortlessly. But she failed. Her mask was cracking. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes so that she couldn't see the tears that were streaming down Emma's cheeks any longer. 'Emma. I never meant for you to—'

'Regina! _Stop _it! Please, will you _stop_ pulling away from me?' Emma demanded, taking hold of Regina's chin so that her eyes snapped back open again. '_Please -_ stop blocking me out!'

'Emma, get off of me. I told you—'

'You didn't mean it,' Emma said, her face only centimetres away. The tears in Regina's eyes began to spill down her cheeks and she made no move to wipe them away. 'I'm not stupid. Everything that's happened here – _everything _– has meant something to you. And now you're trying to push it all away. Why?'

When Regina only groaned Emma suddenly thrust her face forwards, closing the gap between them and kissing the downturned lips before her so angrily that Regina's body visibly slumped back against the tree.

'Regina,' Emma bit out the word, releasing the mayor's arms and instead gently running a finger across her tensed jaw. 'Please. Will you stop being so fucking scared of me and just let me in?'

She paused, catching her bottom lip worriedly between her teeth as she watched the panic that was trembling across the brunette's face. 'You're... you are _allowed _to love me, you know.'

'No I'm not!' Regina suddenly exploded, tears and anger bursting from her as she pushed Emma away from her with such force that she stumbled backwards onto the floor. 'I'm _not_! I can't! Why the hell can't you understand that?!'

'Because it's utter horseshit and you know it,' Emma snapped, staggering back to her feet with her green eyes flashing. 'What the hell is this _really _about, Regina? Don't you dare lie to me again. I'm pretty good at spotting a liar, remember. And, right now, your nose could take out a window.'

'Emma, shut up,' Regina bit out, shoving her backwards as she approached once more and folding her arms across her chest. 'Just _shut up_.'

'Make me.'

'Get your hands off of me!'

'Regina, look me in the eye and just _tell me_—'

'I loved him!' Regina screamed, startling Emma into silence. Her forehead creased in panic as the words began to explode from Regina's lips. 'Daniel! I _loved him_! I created a whole fucking curse around him because I watched him _die _in front of me. He stopped breathing and his body crashed to the floor at my feet and I could do absolutely nothing to save him. I loved him and he loved me and he died because I was weak enough to love him. What about that don't you understand, Emma? What about that can your ridiculous little blonde head simply not comprehend?'

Emma's lips were set in a tight line, her eyes suddenly dry. The thick clouds above them had begun to flake away, raining down pathetic drops of water onto their skin.

'You're not a child anymore, Regina,' she said slowly, longing to reach out to the woman stood before her. 'And I'm not just some stable boy.'

'I realise that,' Regina replied, her voice cracking under the weight of the words that she was finally forcing herself to say. 'You're so much more.'

With that, she finally slid to the ground. As miserable raindrops fell down upon them, the queen wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and let her forehead fall forwards onto them, picturing Daniel's dying face in her mind and realising with a jolt of her heart that the image no longer hurt as much as it once had. Now, there were other things in her life that could easily hurt her so much more.

The corners of Emma's mouth spiked downwards as she stood over her, watching the tiny raindrops as they clung onto Regina's dark hair. Hot, furious tears slid down her cheeks. All she could hear was what sounded like waves crashing inside her head: she could only assume that that was the sound of her heart breaking.

'Regina,' she swallowed. 'I'm not…'

'Don't you understand, Em?' Regina asked softly, looking up at the woman who had destroyed her life and then pulled it all back together again, piece by piece. The brittle shards that made her up now were poorly sewn together, and they were jagged around the edges. She was almost whole again, and yet she knew all too well that it would take only the tiniest nudge to make her fall back apart. 'I loved him, and it nearly destroyed me. If I let myself love you… it would destroy _everything_.'

Emma crouched down before her, reaching out to take her hands without a word.

'I destroy everything I touch,' Regina said flatly, squeezing Emma's fingers between her own. 'I'm not going to let that happen to you as well.'

* * *

Robert heard the sound of panting before he could see the figure that had appeared at the base of his tree.

'Hood!' Little John shouted up at him, beginning to climb. 'Robin!'

'What is it?' Robert asked as the man reached his level, his face red even in the darkness that was falling around them.

'Two women,' the man said, choking out the words between each breath that he could catch. 'One blonde, one dark. They're riding royal horses, and they're camped a few miles away. I couldn't see their faces, but I heard names: I heard the name Regina.'

Robert blinked. Across his lap lay his cursed bow, his thick fingers clutched fiercely around its vibrating frame.

As he turned his dark profile towards the distant cottage, he didn't smile.

'Get some rest tonight, men,' he said. His voice was low and it didn't tremble. 'In the morning, we go and get the boy.'


	15. Chapter 15

**_Trigger warnings for the next two chapters! _**_I know up until now this fic has been relatively fluffy - not so much from here on in. Violence and threats and tying etc. coming up. Sorry for the sudden turn! I hope it works._

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen**

The night was brought in by an endless stream of rain. Regina and Emma didn't eat, nor did they talk: they pitched one tent in the miserable drizzle and lay in it side by side, stealing desperate kisses until the sun rose. Even as it crept over their pillows, neither of them had slept.

As the horses pressed further into the forest, the morning became the afternoon. Emma kept her eyes on the water-logged ground, unable to think of a single word to say that wouldn't be a comment on the air of finality that was hanging around the pair of them: whether it was from the absolute lack of a conclusion that she and the brunette riding beside her had reached the night before, or whether it was from the fact that they were now less than a mile away from the cottage where she was suddenly but inexplicably certain that they would find their son, she couldn't decide. All she knew was that when she reached out a hand, Regina held out her own in response and immediately bridged the gap between the two horses – and she knew then that the queen felt it too. Today, something was ending.

'We can make it work,' Emma blurted out, still not looking up.

Regina could only blink. 'What?'

'This,' Emma pulled on her hand, bringing the horses even closer together until their legs nearly brushed as they walked. She took a deep breath. 'Us. It _can _work.'

'Emma…'

'I mean, it'll be difficult,' Emma interrupted like Regina hadn't said anything. 'Obviously. There's an endless list of people who don't want us to be friends, let alone anything more, and having to justify ourselves to them day in and day out is going to become exhausting pretty damn quickly. It might get to be too much at some point, and I realise that. I know that it's going to be serious and scary and tough as hell. But, Regina… the thing is…'

Her sentence teetered off into nothing, but she felt the fingers that were wrapped around her hand squeeze for a moment. She blinked furiously, watching as her horse's dark pelt began to blur beneath her. And then she finally forced herself to look up at the woman riding beside her.

'The thing is, Regina, that I don't _care _about any of that,' she said flatly. 'I don't give a shit if my parents would rather see me dead than see me with you. I don't _care_ what other people think of me anymore. The truth is… the truth is that, even with Henry and Mary Margaret and all of this stuff back in my life… it's still been so _hard_ to be happy. Not one day has gone by where I haven't just felt empty, even if it's only for a second – it's like everyone back home is still expecting something huge and grand from me because now they can only see me as the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, and… even if it is _true_, I feel like most of the time I'm just going through the motions. I'm acting the part just so I don't let everyone down all over again.

'But with you, I don't have to act as anything. You know what I am: I'm clumsy, and insensitive, and I can't cook and I don't think and I won't do anything that I don't want to – and yet you like me anyway. And the fact that I'm a… a _princess_, it isn't something that has led you to expect anything special from me. I mean, if anything, it's only become a bit of a setback. Really, other than Henry, you're the only person left who still likes me for the person that I was before the curse broke, and you're _definitely_ the only person who likes me even with all of the stuff that happened way before that. You… you let me be myself, Regina – as messed up and dysfunctional as that person might be. You're the only person who's never asked me to change. You know exactly who I am and how annoying I can be, and you let me get under your skin anyway. If you can handle _that_ – you sure as hell should be able to deal with a few awkward family dinners with my parents.'

Regina didn't attempt to pretend that she wasn't crying as she listened. Rolling her glassy eyes to the sky, she could only smile at the bitter, ugly truth of what Emma had just blurted out at her: that they were as equally dysfunctional as each other, and yet they were the only people in the world who wouldn't expect anything more, or anything less.

'Don't you see that?' Emma eventually whispered, squeezing on Regina's hand until their knuckles went white. The brunette sighed, feeling the hot tears dripping off of her chin.

'It's going to end badly,' she said.

'It doesn't have to.'

'But it's likely.'

'It's _always _likely,' Emma said, exasperated. '_Any _time you fall for someone, the chances are that it's going to end at some point. You're only meant to stay with one person for the rest of your life, so every other person that you cross paths with is statistically likely to break your heart into tiny fucking pieces. But that doesn't stop anyone else – no one _else_ is quite so terrified of having their heart broken that they close it off completely.'

'That's rich, coming from you,' Regina said softly, raising her eyebrows. Emma was forced to laugh.

'I know,' she said, shaking her head. 'And now look at me: my walls are long gone, Regina. You broke straight through them and I'm not even bothering to pick them up again. I'm here, waiting. Wall-less. If you'll have me.'

Regina sucked in a breath through her teeth. Bringing their clasped hands to her lips, she pressed a kiss onto Emma's grime-covered knuckle, their eyes never parting. Emma's face creased into a smile.

'If you break my heart,' Regina muttered, her eyes dangerous and pleading all at once, 'I can't be held responsible for what I'll do.'

'You won't _do _anything,' Emma said with a smile. 'You're not that girl anymore. I hate to break it to you, Regina, but you've changed more than you realise – if I ever break your heart, I know what you'll do: you'll curl up in a ball and cry and just deal with it like all of the rest of us have to.'

Regina snorted with laughter. 'I doubt that.'

Emma leaned forwards, her eyebrows raised as high as they would go. 'Well. Here's to never having to find out.'

Just as they both leaned towards one another, a snap of branches nearby suddenly broke them apart. Emma sat bolt upright on her horse, instinctively grabbing the bow that was strung across her back and threading an arrow through it. She pointed it towards the closest trees, blindly aiming for the source of the noise. Regina blinked, looking wildly about her but seeing nothing. She looked back to where Emma's forehead was deeply creased, her eyes so narrow that she was sure that she couldn't possibly see out of them.

'What is it?' Regina hissed, looking about them once more. Another snap, above them this time. Emma pointed her weapon straight upwards, deep into the canopy of the trees, but she still didn't release the arrow.

'Emma?' Regina prompted, clutching more tightly onto her horse's reins. 'Emma? What is it? Is it an animal?'

Emma thought, for a moment, that she saw movement in the trees above them. She stopped her horse, peering up between the dark leaves, lowering the weapon to her side once more. It was odd, but she thought that she saw a boot. A man's boot. But then it was gone, the leaves were clear, and all she could see was the glassy sky straight through the trees.

'No,' she replied slowly, nudging her horse until it began to walk again. As she reached Regina's side once more she turned behind her for a final moment, her green eyes scouring the forest floor. Silence had fallen once again, but the echo of the snapping branches followed them like a gunshot. 'No. It was something else.'

* * *

'He's coming,' George said from somewhere near Robert's elbow. The enormous man ignored him: he had heard the boy approaching without looking up from the palm of his hand. His black eyes were focused on the shrivelled up bean that he always carried with him; the tiny symbol of what this land had once held before it had all been cruelly snatched from them by the very woman whom he knew was drawing closer and closer to them with every passing minute.

The wait for Henry to leave the cottage that morning had been excruciating – but it had been worth it. Glancing up as he placed the dead bean back in his pocket, Robert watched as the small boy approached the thick line of trees that surrounded his new home. Gesturing to his left, Robert led his group of men deeper into the forest, waiting behind a nearby group of trees until the child came to them.

Henry had already strung an arrow through his bow and was aiming it up into the trees when he heard the rustling. Spinning on the spot, he pointed the weapon directly between the eyes of Robert as he stood casually among the enormous elm trees.

'Hey.'

'Robert,' Henry gasped, lowering the weapon with sweat dripping into his eyes. 'Why are you sneaking up on me? I could have _hit _you.'

'Not shooting like that, you couldn't have,' Robert said with a tight-lipped smile. Henry's face remained completely flat in response.

'Hey, it was a joke,' Robert said, taking a step closer to him. 'I didn't mean it.'

'Sure,' Henry muttered, kicking the dirt at his feet. 'Did you want something?'

'I just wanted to see how you're doing,' the man said, finally reaching the boy's side and kneeling down before him with a faint smile.

'I'm fine.' Henry crossed his arms across his chest, closing himself off as assertively as he could manage. Whether he had once liked Robert or not, he couldn't pretend that the giant man didn't terrify him at times: regardless of his immense size or his apparent rage issues, Henry could only look into those colourless eyes for so long before he felt his whole body go cold. There was something wrong with this man, something that fell even further than just the cursed bow that vibrated against the palms of his hands.

'You sure?' Robert asked, tilting his head to one side. 'You don't look it. You look upset.'

'I'm good, thanks,' Henry said. It was strange, but the air around them suddenly felt different. Thicker. Stiller. He went to turn his head to look behind him but Robert quickly spoke, drawing his attention back at once.

'You're still shooting, I see – how's it going?'

'Fine.'

'You look like you're enjoying it.'

Henry shrugged. 'I guess.'

'More than you're enjoying living here?' Robert asked in a low voice, now twirling one of his smouldering arrows between two of his fingers. Henry frowned. 'Don't think I haven't noticed that you're unhappy, Henry. I do care about you, you know.'

'No you don't,' the boy scoffed, taking a step back. 'You don't even know me – why would you ever care about whether I'm happy or not?'

'I care more about you than your own mothers do,' Robert warned, his eyes unblinking. 'They're still not here, are they Henry? How long's it been now? A week, at least – and still they haven't managed to come and find you.'

'They're coming,' Henry hissed, taking another step back. The air around him was past still now – it was frozen. The midday sun had somehow vanished and something was very, very wrong.

'Oh, I know,' Robert replied coolly. Henry stopped in his tracks. His hazel eyes blinked.

'…what?'

'I know that they're coming,' Robert repeated, rising up from his knees and letting the bones in his legs crack back into position. 'They're probably almost here, actually. Just a few miles away – looking for you.'

Henry's mouth hung open, utterly unable to fathom a response. Regina and Emma – they were _here_. They were somewhere in this hideous forest and they were looking for him, and Robert knew. Robert had always known.

'How—'

'The problem is though, Henry,' Robert muttered, leaning forwards until his tanned face was nearly pressed up against the young boy's, 'that they might not be the _first _to find you. Do you see? As hard as they might be trying to come and rescue you… it would be an _awful_ shame is someone else got there first.'

Henry blinked, choking out the only word that he could manage. 'Who?'

'Us, of course. Your little band of merry men.' Robert grinned as he spoke. There was a pause, and then hands clapped hold of Henry's arms, dragging him backwards into the trees. The boy clung desperately onto his bow, kicking his legs out even as two more sets of rough, grown hands grabbed hold of them. Throwing his head back, the boy screamed as loudly as he could. Then a thick piece of fabric was stretched between his lips and the sound faded into nothing.

* * *

'_Henry_.'

Half a mile away, two women heard a shout that they recognised all too clearly. Two horses began to toss their heads in distress. Icy fingers of absolute panic gripped at Emma and Regina and they looked at one another for a single moment, their mouths gaping open as that terrified scream pierced through the surrounding trees. And then the horses were running, galloping faster than they had been allowed to since that very first day when the women had first come to ride them.

Clinging desperately onto the reins, Emma and Regina burst through the trees until they finally reached the clearing that held the dwarves cottage. Like Granny's had been, the building was badly damaged and caved in in places – but it was clearly occupied. A thin plume of smoke curled upwards from the narrow chimney and Emma leapt from her horse without waiting for him to stop running, tearing towards the lit windows. Regina drew her own animal to a halt, tumbling down from his back with furious tears pricking at her eyes and going to follow the blonde's tracks. And then she heard it – rustling. More breaking branches. Her dark eyes snapped away from the cottage and into the thick forest that surrounded it, seeing absolutely nothing but knowing without thinking that her son was in there.

She turned and grabbed one of the knives from the nearest saddle bag. '_Emma_,' she hissed, not waiting for the blonde to turn around and answer her before she took off into the woods with her heart beating in her ears.

She ran as fast as her aching legs could take her, the blade clutched desperately in her hand as she slashed through branches and brambles trying to catch a glimpse of where that petrified scream had come from. She could hear movement ahead of her. Pushing another branch to one side she staggered over a ditch, throwing herself forwards into a clearing. A deserted clearing. She took a moment to look around, deciding which direction to keep running in, when something abruptly struck her as being quite odd: the absolute, desolate silence. All of the leaves had stopped rustling and the sounds of struggling had ceased entirely. She stood still, her hands trembling by her sides, waiting for something to move. Waiting to hear something other than the sound of Emma struggling to catch up with her a hundred feet away, or the sounds of her own agonised breathing.

The circle of trees surrounding her had thick, heavy trunks, and when men began to appear from behind them, Regina didn't jump. Instead she swallowed, dragging her gaze calmly across each one of them, waiting to see someone she recognised or – desperately – the face of her son. She saw neither. Each man took a few steady steps towards her with cold, lecherous smirks carved deep into their grizzled faces. She didn't move. She couldn't hear Emma approaching anymore. The knife in her hand was pathetically small and she knew it – she realised how overwhelmed she was long before she turned to see a heavyset bow and arrow pointed directly between her eyes.

The man holding it was enormous. Wearing a loose green shirt and a matching green cap, his entire frame seemed to suck the very sunlight from that vast clearing. His skin was dark and his hair was darker, but more terrible than that was his eyes: his eyes had no light in them at all.

Regina didn't flinch as he pulled the string of the bow more tightly towards him. She took in the weapon, recognising it immediately even without having ever seen it before, and allowed a tiny sigh to slip from between her lips. Flinging her right arm forwards, the knife fell to the ground. Robert smiled tightly, then nodded to his left.

An explosion of movement came from the trees behind him and two men appeared, dragging a small boy between them. His hands were tied and a piece of material was still wrenched between his lips, but the moment that he saw the woman stood desperately alone before Robert's arrow, he propelled himself forwards towards her.

'_Mom_!' the word could be heard clearly even from behind the fabric that gagged him. A sob choked from Regina's throat and she instinctively stepped forwards, stopping herself from going any further only when one of the men produced a knife and held its point directly at her son's throat.

Leading Henry to one of the furthest trees, the men tied him to the trunk with his useless bow and arrows flung at his feet. The boy automatically began to struggle against his bindings, clenching his teeth around the gag in a desperate attempt to break through it. Regina watched as the skin on his wrists began to turn white, and then pink, as the ropes cut against them. A furious muscle ticked in her jaw as it clenched and unclenched, her eyes filling with tears that she couldn't possibly let spill out.

'He's certainly a spritely young boy, isn't he?' Robert growled at her, taking a step closer with his arrow still poised. Regina quickly realised that the threat of it – the cursed arrow that was aimed directly at her skull – was so much less than the threat of the other man's knife at her son's throat that his attempts to intimidate her with it were almost laughable. 'I hardly need to wonder where he gets it.'

With those words there was another burst of movement from behind her, and Regina's head snapped around just in time to see Emma exploding through the trees. Flanked by two men – one grotesquely overweight and the other almost as tall as Robert – she was untied but struggling even more aggressively than her son was. Thrashing her whole body from side to side as the larger man wrapped his hammy arm around her neck, she bit fiercely down on the flesh that she found there. The man shouted out loud and pushed her away, waiting until she was looking triumphantly back at him before throwing out a thick fist that hit the side of her face with a sickening crack. She fell to the floor in an instant, choking on her own air. Her eyes were tightly shut as she spat a mouthful of blood into the grass.

Then the sound of struggling caught her attention, and she blindly looked up again. For a split second, she looked at Henry with the blankest of expressions: she watched him fighting against the ropes that held him back with her green eyes completely vacant, like she couldn't remember who he was at all. And then she exploded.

'_Henry!_' Heaving herself off of the floor, she desperately tried to tear across the clearing towards him. She barely made it two metres before the taller man reached out, grabbing hold of the blonde curls that streamed out behind her, and tugged her back once more.

He held her wriggling form close to his heavy frame, wrapping his arm so tightly around her throat that her eyes began to bulge. Emma reached up both of her hands, clawing desperately at his forearm, trying to force some room between his heft and her windpipe. As she did so the man's other hand began to mark a path down the front of her body, vilely squeezing at whatever flesh he found there before settling resolutely at the front of her pants. A lewd glint shone out from his otherwise dull eyes.

The desperation that was streaked across her greying skin screamed out at Regina and, without thinking about it, she found herself taking a sharp step forwards. She could feel that buzzing in her palms again – the tingling that told her that magic wasn't too far away. Her power came from her emotions, and right then her emotions were in tatters: she was furious, and she was devastated, and she was desperate. The man holding a knife to her son's throat saw her movement and pushed it harder, and Regina immediately caught the small boy's wince. She stopped walking. Her dark eyes flicked over to where Emma was trying to shake her head, silently pleading with her to stop.

_Don't_. She didn't need words to say it. Regina swallowed, her eyebrows creased painfully together, as she watched the colour draining from the blonde woman's face.

'Now, boys.' As the silence wore on Robert finally declared the words without lowering his weapon even for a moment. 'Let's be hospitable, shall we? Arthur – let that woman go. Let's reunite her with her son.'

Emma blinked in surprise as the tall man reluctantly released her from his grip, letting her stagger forwards with her hands clasped around her bruised throat. Throwing a pleading look at Regina, she turned and hurtled towards their son. The man with the knife stepped back as she wrapped her arms around his restrained form, tearing the gag from his mouth and kissing him across his tear-stung cheeks with enough desperation to come from both of the women there.

It was barely a second later when two pairs of hands grabbed hold of her once more, forcing her to crouch down next to where Henry was stood and tying her clawing hands to the ropes that bound his waist to the tree.

'You bastards,' she hissed out, furious tears pricking at her eyes. She kicked out a leg and it caught one man's shin with a satisfying crack. He automatically reached down, grabbing hold of her flushed face with one enormous hand, and slapped her so hard with the other that her skull rocketed into the tree trunk.

'Emma!' Henry moaned, struggling towards the woman who was crouched only inches away from him and failing to reach her.

'I'm okay, kid,' she muttered, biting down hard on her swollen lip. Regina watched as she forced herself to sit back upright with her eyes tightly closed, taking deep, heaving breaths. She looked up and tried to smile up at her petrified son. Regina took one last look at the two broken, grey faces that were trembling on the other side of the clearing, and finally she snapped.

'_Enough_,' she barked out. Ignoring the man who was still pointing his damned weapon between her eyes, she took a step forwards with her spine set straight beneath her filthy jacket. The circle of hunters all jumped, the sudden snap of her voice startling every single one of them. '_Stop _this. It's obviously me that you're here for – stop tormenting my son and stop attacking my… Just, stop it. _Now_.'

Robert edged towards her with a sneer. 'I think you'll find, _your majesty_,' he said, lowering his weapon just so that he could grab Regina's face with fingers that were cold and smelt like rust and blood, 'that your jurisdiction doesn't pack quite the same punch that it once may have done. You see – not that many people here feel the _need_ to listen to you any more.'

Regina met his dead eyes with a furious glare. 'Let them go.'

A bark of laughter escaped from the enormous man's lips. 'I really don't think so.'

He raised his weapon once more, but this time only to look up at it longingly. Regina watched the light that shimmered and vibrated around the surface of the metal, never seeming to touch it. She shuddered against her will.

'Men,' Robert called out, not turning to face the group that surrounded him. 'You've done your work. You can leave now.'

'Robert?' the fat man replied with a frown, glaring across at where Emma was sitting. 'Are you sure? You'll—'

'I am perfectly sure, John. Now go: all of you.' Another burst of cold laughter escaped from his lips. 'You know what can happen when this thing goes off.'

He looked down at his weapon as he spoke. Some of the men laughed. As they began to walk away, jostling and loudly discussing what they were going to do with the amount of money that they were about to receive, Regina watched as Little John and Arthur took a small detour towards where Emma was curled up against the tree. She stared defiantly up at them even as two thick globs of spit rained down on her face. Then they turned away with their lips twisted into vile smirks, finally disappearing between the trees.

Emma bent her head forwards, scraping the dense liquid from her cheeks on what grimy fabric she could reach. When she looked up at Regina, her eyes were filled with shame. And something else: something that, for the first time since Regina had known her, looked a bit like terror.

The former queen turned back to the man who still had his vile weapon aimed at her, feeling the curse of the arrows rotting through the air around them. She calmly raised her hands up before her.

'What do you want from me, Robin Hood?' Her voice was flat, and exhausted. Robert didn't wince at the sound of his real name.

'I want to make a deal with you, your majesty,' he said, his brown teeth showing from between his grinning lips. 'So. Let's have a little talk, shall we?'


	16. Chapter 16

_**A bit more angst and some possible trigger warnings for this chapter guys! x**_

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen**

'It did take you long enough to get here, didn't it?'

Regina stood alone in the centre of the clearing, her unshaking hands held out before her. With his bow still raised and aimed directly at the back of her skull, Robert was slowly circling around her. His heavy footsteps creaked against the bare ground. From their distance Henry and Emma watched as Regina struggled to inhale, her chest shuddering with the effort. She couldn't bring herself to look back at them, and so her gaze fell onto the empty ground before her. The ferocity of the Evil Queen that had returned to her only moments before had suddenly slipped away from her again, and it took every ounce of strength that she still possessed to simply not fall to the floor and cry.

'Lost for words?' Robert's mouth materialised against her ear, his breath hot and thick. She winced, closing her eyes.

'We got here as fast as we could,' she forced out through gritted teeth, turning her face away.

'And yet not fast enough,' Robert sneered, stepping between her and the two figures that were still struggling against their ropes. 'You know, in your absence, your majesty, I've gotten to know your son _very _well. I even taught him a thing or two.'

Regina's eyes flicked anxiously over his shoulder to where her son stood. He was shaking his head furiously.

'He… he taught me how to shoot, Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't know,' he forced out, shrinking back when Robert turned to glare at him.

Regina felt a frown begin to pinch at her forehead as she looked back at the weapon that was still poised directly between her and Robert. 'You taught him to shoot,' she said slowly. '_You_.'

'Yes, _I _did,' he snapped in response.

She couldn't stop the casual snort of derision that escaped from her nose. 'I see.'

'What?'

'Nothing,' Regina said, shaking her head. From over Robert's shoulder she could see Emma gritting her teeth, silently pleading with her to just shut up and stop antagonising him. But she couldn't: she knew how this would end. Her being polite to him now would change nothing at all. 'I've just heard whispers about that little bow of yours. That's all.'

Robert's face twitched momentarily. 'And those whispers are _amusing _to you?'

Regina's lips quirked upwards into a cruel smile. 'No. Not exactly. I just find it mildly entertaining that my son had his hunting lessons from someone who is obviously _so _bad at shooting by themselves that they need a cursed weapon to help them along.'

Iron fingers suddenly clamped across her jaw and she felt her body being flung back against the nearest tree, the air wheezing from her lungs. Robert pressed his weight against her, digging dirty fingernails into her cheeks as he hissed into her ear, 'I do what I need to in order to survive. Because of _your _curse, Regina. This is all because of _you_.'

Choking for air, Regina didn't reply. Her gaze fell back across his shoulder to where Emma had managed to rise to her feet, throwing her whole body forwards with her hands still bound to the tree beside her. The ropes were slashing at her wrists and the pinched expression on her face let Regina know that she was undeniably in agony – but she still kept pulling. The brunette swallowed and shut her eyes to the sight, replying to Robert in the quietest voice that she could summon.

'I'm not the same person that I was when I cast that curse.'

His grip loosened in surprise. She snapped her eyes back open again and looked tentatively up at him, half expecting to see him wavering. Instead she found him smirking, his black eyes swimming with disgust.

'So I hear.' He suddenly let go of her, letting her body fall back against the tree with a thud. 'Your son has been telling me _all _about your newly reformed personality, your majesty. It's almost touching, really – if it weren't for the fact that it's all complete bullshit.'

Regina's lower lip trembled. 'You know nothing.'

'I know far too much,' Robert snapped in contradiction. He turned to face the struggling boy for a moment. 'What was it that you called her, Henry? What was it that you said? That she was… ah. That she's a _good person_ now. That's she's _changed_.'

And Regina's heart shattered. Looking past Robert she met the gaze of her eleven year old son, knowing with one look at his desperate hazel eyes that the enormous man wasn't lying. He really had said that. Even when he had been angry at her and hating her and felt not only betrayed by her but utterly abandoned, he had still defended her. A tiny, pathetic smile quivered on her lips for just a second, and she felt her head fall back against the tree once more.

_Whatever ends here today_, she thought to herself, closing her eyes. _That has to be enough._

'And on that note,' Robert burst through her reverie with his drawling, mocking tones. 'I'd like to test out this little claim of his. To see just _how _much the Evil Queen has changed.'

Regina's eyes slowly opened once more. As she looked up at him, Robert didn't see any challenge in her pupils: he saw only exhaustion. It was obvious that the woman stood before him was sick of fighting; was sick to death of battling with herself and with everyone around her - and that made her weak to him. He smirked to himself as she answered him in the flattest voice that she could muster.

'What do you want?'

'In the words of our mutual friend Rumplestiltskin, I'd like to offer you a little deal.'

Looping his bow over one shoulder, Robert reached a hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a tiny slither of blackness. Regina's eyes fell to it. Her heart plummeted.

'Where did you get that?'

Emma struggled to see what was in his hand, tearing at the ropes, trying to ignore the thin trail of blood that was creeping down the inside of her arm. But Robert's huge frame dwarfed everything, Regina included. All that the blonde could see was the desperate expression piercing through the queen's eyes.

'In my line of work,' Robert leaned close into her face, the words dripping from his tongue, 'I do a lot of… foraging. You see, in the shit heap of a world that you left behind, there are _lot_ of desperate people. A lot of starving people. Not much goes on here and there isn't a great deal to buy or trade or even eat. So some people get paid to go out and find the things that we all need in order to survive – people like me. I get paid to hunt and to steal and to scavenge, in order to come back and give it to the needy.

'I found this one day,' he said with a sigh, holding the dead piece of magic up before Regina's eyes. 'It's useless to me. I have no way of getting it to work again. But _you_, your majesty – I'm willing to bet that _you _do.'

The caramel eyes before him didn't blink. Regina tore them from the dried-up bean and forced herself to look straight at Robert as she repeated, 'Robin. What do you want?'

'My terms are fairly simple,' he muttered, tightly curling his fingers around the bean before spitting his conditions into the queen's face. 'I want the heart of the woman who cursed us all to this hell.'

Regina blinked. She heard Emma's voice crying out before she had a chance to respond for herself. 'No. Regina, _no_.'

'You want my heart,' Regina slowly clarified, 'in exchange for that bean, and for the lives of my son and his mother?'

'That's exactly what I want.' A hateful colour was slowly, inexplicably seeping through Robert's black eyes. At first it almost looked purple: Regina eventually realised that it was a deep, vile red.

'Why?' she forced out, her voice cracking. 'What could you possibly want with that?'

Robert threw his head back as he let out a deep, terrible laugh. '_Why_? My god, woman, you have gotten soft over the last twenty eight years, haven't you? Do you have _any _idea how much the people left in this land despise you? How much they would pay me and my men to bring them the beating flesh of the one person responsible for damning us all to live in this uncertain, dying misery for the rest of time?' He leaned forwards once more, his reddened gaze glinting. 'I could do _anything _with that sort of money. No more hunting; no more stealing. I could pack up and throw all of this shit away, and I could leave. I give them your heart to do whatever the hell they want with it – and I'm free. I'm free from your godforsaken curse forever.'

'And if I let you take it,' Regina managed to choke out the words. 'If I let you kill me – you promise that you'll let them go?'

'Regina, are you _insane_?' Emma screamed across the clearing at her, falling forwards onto her knees with the effort of trying to tear her wrists free. 'Don't listen to him! Don't you _dare _say yes!'

'Mom,' Henry wailed, tears running down his flushed cheeks. 'Please, Mom. Don't do it. You don't have to.'

Regina's startlingly dry eyes found her son's and, when she moved to step around Robert, he let her go.

'This isn't _about _me, Henry,' she said sadly, standing far enough away from him that he couldn't quite see just how her heart was breaking. 'It's never been about me – it's only ever been about getting you home again. And if… if Emma can promise to make sure that that happens – then that's all that matters to me.'

'_No_!' The sound of the young boy's scream echoed throughout the trees, crashing against their heavy trunks. Beside him Emma shook her head, her mouth hanging open, utterly speechless. She watched as Regina sighed, then turned back to the man who was stood with his arms casually folded across his vast chest.

'If you promise to let them both go free,' she said, 'then I accept your offer.'

His gaze darkened, a malicious smile spreading across thin lips.

'Well. Then you appear to have yourself a deal, your majesty.' Regina could barely hear his words over the sound of Henry screaming.

Robert held the dead bean up to his lips for one last moment, chuckling to himself as he pressed a kiss onto it.

'You two,' he sneered across the clearing at the two struggling figures, 'are very lucky indeed. Lucky that I am a man who _always _honours my agreements.'

He held out his hand and quickly took hold of Regina's, forcing her fingers open and pressing the tiny object into it.

'Go on, then,' he said darkly, no longer smiling. His face had an odd expression drawn across it – it verged on relief. Relief that he had actually won. 'Go and give them their precious winnings.'

Regina swallowed and took a small step back, the bean clutched in her damp palm as she waited for him to raise the bow to her head again. He didn't. She spun on the spot and stumbled the last few feet across the clearing, falling to her knees, at last, before the small boy who had brought her here and then brought her to finally, completely, do something that was good.

'Mom,' he said desperately, the words catching in his waterlogged throat. 'Please. Please don't do this.'

'I have to, baby,' she said softly, reaching out her hand and pressing it against the side of his hot face. His forehead creased in the same way that Emma's did when she was breaking, and she forced herself to take a deep breath, a small smile spreading across her lips. 'I have to do this for you.'

'No you don't,' he insisted, still struggling against the ropes. '_Please_ – Mom, I don't care about what you've done before. I don't care about the curse or the magic or any of those things – I _love you_. I need you and if you go away then I won't… I can't…'

'Shhh,' she said, leaning her forehead gently against his own. Her free hand found his against the rough bark of the tree. 'Shhh, sweetheart. It's okay. It'll be okay. I promise.'

'You can't know that,' he whimpered against her shoulder, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and inhaling the familiar scent that had followed him throughout his entire life.

'I can,' she whispered. 'Emma's going to look after you, Henry. She's going to love you hard enough for the both of us. As long as you've got her – you've still got me. I promise you that. With every inch of me, I promise.'

'Mom...' It was the only word that he could force out. His pink cheeks were slick with tears as she pulled away from him, pressing one final kiss on the top of his matted hair.

'Be good,' she whispered, rubbing a thumb underneath his eyes. And then she let go. She pulled herself away from her son, and she left a tiny piece of her heart tied to the tree.

Emma watched her all the while with enormous, pleading eyes. She had witnessed the whole exchange without a single tear rolling down her cheeks and yet, the moment that those caramel eyes finally turned to her, she crumbled. Falling back onto the ground with her bloody wrists pinned high above her, a howl of absolute agony ripped from her lips and she forced herself to close her eyes. Shaking her head, she let a sob tear through her.

'Emma…'

'Don't do it,' Emma choked out, her eyes still squeezed shut because, until she knew that she could open them and not see Regina about to sacrifice herself for her, she wasn't sure that she could bear the see the world before her ever again. 'Please. Do _something_. Use magic. Blow him apart. Send him a hundred miles away. Send _yourself _a hundred miles away. Please, Regina, you have to—'

'Emma,' Regina softly interjected, reaching out her hand so that she could rub her thumb along the swollen line of the blonde's jaw. Two green eyes snapped back open, rippling with tears. 'I have to do this.'

'Use magic.'

'We have a rule against that,' Regina smiled wretchedly. 'If you recall.'

'You cannot seriously be making jokes _now_, of all the times.'

'I'm not joking,' Regina sighed, glancing down at the ground for just a moment before she looked back into the magnificent, frightening eyes that were staring up at her. 'I have to do this, and I have to do this by myself. No magic. No help from you. Emma… you know, I've spent my whole life running away from everything. Fighting everything. Desperately trying to feel good about myself without ever doing anything truly good to get there. But this… this _is_ good, Emma. This is what good does: they give themselves up so that the people that they love can survive without them. This is what I want to do, for you.'

Emma's bottom lip trembled furiously, tears spilling down her bruised face. 'But I don't _want _to survive without you,' she whimpered.

Regina swallowed, forcing a breath into her shallow lungs. She couldn't think of a word to say in response.

Reaching out for Emma's clammy hand, she pressed the bean between her fingers. Even as the blonde resisted, she forced them closed.

'Take that,' she said softly, 'and take our son home.'

Emma shook her head. 'I can't do that.'

'Yes you can.'

'No, I can't.' Her green eyes reflected the very trees around them as she spoke, the shaking leaves dancing across her pupils. 'Not without you. You _are _our home.'

Biting down on her lip to stop herself from falling apart, Regina leaned forwards and pressed a kiss onto Emma's forehead. She lingered there for a moment, her eyes closed, taking in for one last time the faint scent of the woods and of the air and of vanilla. Her fingers clung onto the bare skin of Emma's arms. When she leaned back again, rising to her feet, she looked down at the two broken figures before her and she felt the cracks that had run throughout her heart for so many lonely, painful years finally begin to heal. Her battered, devastated heart stopped glowing quite so darkly. A tiny smile tugged at her lips as she took a step backwards.

'I'll miss you,' she said simply.

And then she walked away.

She turned to Robert with a face that was streaked with tears, but was utterly calm. Her fists hung loosely by her sides, her dark hair blowing freely about her head. Robert had stood impatiently for the whole while, shining up one hateful arrow on the rough fabric of his shirt as he waited. When Regina turned to face him, his dark eyes clouded over once more. He ignored the frantic screaming coming from the tree just behind her.

'Well, your majesty,' he said in a low voice, threading the arrow carefully through his bow for one last time. 'This must be farewell. Though you are a fan of curses, after all – let's see how much you like this one.'

He finally raised the weapon and began to pull back on the bowstring. One of his eyes flickered shut, the other looking sharply at the centre of the queen's heaving chest. Henry howled as loudly as he could, hefting his entire weight against his ropes, tearing forwards to where his own discarded bow lay only feet away from him. The bindings cut at every inch of skin that they came across, but they did not yield. Beside him Emma was oddly still, but her face was sticky with tears and her heart was burning and breaking inside of her chest. She watched as Robert pulled the string firmly backwards, an odd buzzing feeling rising in her palms. It was only when he took a deep breath and started to loosen the arrow that the buzzing turned to electricity, and the young woman finally exploded.

A flash of purple broke her and her son free from the ropes that had been holding them back, and before she could think about what she was doing she had flung herself at the woman stood ahead of her. Knocking Regina's body to the ground with the same thud that had lead them into that world only a week earlier, Emma closed her eyes and felt the red-hot stab of a cursed arrow plunging between her ribs.

As Regina hit the ground, Emma landed on top of her. The brunette looked up, catching sight of Robert's bewildered expression, before finally seeing the burning shard of metal that was sticking out from the blonde's chest. A howl that ripped the very leaves from the trees escaped from her lips as she fell forwards onto Emma's body, wrapping her arms fiercely around her with her hands trembling.

Robert hissed in annoyance, but hadn't even reached out a hand for a second arrow before something whistled through the air towards him. He glanced up just in time to see that Henry had reached his bow first. The arrow struck him solidly in the centre of his forehead and, for the split second before his enormous body thudded to the ground, his black eyes truly did see colour: they saw a sticky, blood red.

Regina tugged Emma's body across her lap, holding her as tightly as she could against her chest. Air was wheezing helplessly from the blonde's lungs as she looked up at the empty sky above her, the arrow's point tearing through her heart and spilling its curse into her slowing blood. As Henry reached her side, her lips were going grey. Regina looked down to see that her grubby white tank top was dripping with red and she moaned, pressing her forehead down onto Emma's with her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

'No,' she whispered, rocking the shaking woman back and forth. 'No, no, no, no. Emma. Please don't do this to me.'

'Regina,' Emma choked out, her voice catching on the blood that was gathering in her throat. Her eyes were blinking rapidly, trying desperately to stay open. Henry grabbed hold of both of her hands and squeezed, his tears streaming down onto their interlaced fingers.

'No,' was all that Regina could reply with. She reached down to where the arrow was embedded in Emma's side and wrapped her fingers around its dreadful core, pulling it free with a hideous tearing sound. Emma groaned, blood gargling at the back of her throat. A dark spot had appeared at the corner of her mouth. The queen held out a trembling, blood-stained hand to the wound and begged it to heal, begged her magic to come back to her and to finally do something good. All magic came with a price and she didn't care what it was – she would lie down then and there and stab that abhorrent arrow straight through her own heart if it meant that the woman laying in her arms could rise up and take another breath and hold their son close, raising him in the way that she'd never been able to before. But the buzzing in Regina's palm ignited into nothingness, and the cursed blood didn't stop flowing. Emma rolled her eyes back, trying to get a glimpse of the woman who was holding her.

'Regina,' she choked out once more, her eyelids fluttering shut. Her lips had long since turned blue. 'I… please…'

'Emma, Emma, Emma,' Regina hissed out, hefting Emma's body upwards so that her head lolled back against her shoulder. 'Don't leave me. Don't you _dare _leave me. Look at me – please, Em, please look at me.'

The green eyes flickered open at her request, looking blankly up at the tear-streaked face of the woman who had her arms wrapped around her. For a moment, the corners of Emma's mouth ticked upwards into a final, pathetic smile. And then the light finally left her eyes, so that when Regina looked into them all that she could see there was her own broken expression reflected back at her.

'Mom?' Henry choked out, leaning forwards across her crumpled body. He released one of her hands so that he could take hold of her arm instead, shaking it, gently at first, then more desperately. '_Mom_?'

The word came out as little more than a shriek. Eventually the boy could only fall forwards onto his mother's body, pressing his face into her stomach with his shoulders heaving and tears choking out of his throat. All the while Regina sat completely still, her mouth slightly open, staring down into the unseeing eyes of the woman that had simply stopped being in her arms.

She reached out a numb hand and pressed the eyelids closed. The green of Emma Swan's eyes, and the reflection of the sky and of the trees that Regina had so often found there, was lost. Leaning forwards, she pressed her forehead back against Emma's and gently rocked her body from side to side.

'I'm sorry, Emma,' she whispered into her matted, chaotic hair, pressing a kiss against the flesh of her ear. 'I'm so, so sorry.'

Her thumb unconsciously traced the cold skin around Emma's slightly parted lips. They still looked like they were smiling.

Regina choked, forcing back the suffocating sound of her heart being torn to pieces and swallowing it down into the dark pit of her stomach, where she always should have kept it. It was too late now, though: Emma had gotten under her skin, and then she had wormed her way deep into her battered, barricaded heart. Pain shot like electricity through her and she threw her head back, rolling her eyes to the sky.

'Henry.' The effort that it took to force out that one small word was nearly enough to break her all over again.

The boy slowly lifted his head from where it had been resting on Emma's stomach and looked up at her with reddened eyes.

'Mom?' he croaked out in response. Regina sighed, holding out a blood-smeared hand to him and watching as he placed his own in the centre of her palm without a moment's hesitation. She squeezed on his fingers. He looked so young all of a sudden: so tiny and broken and unsure.

'Henry, sweetie,' Regina took a deep breath, begging her voice to not crack for just a moment longer. 'I need you to go back to the cottage.'

'Why?' he asked, not letting go of her hand.

'Because I need to get Emma out of here,' Regina replied, as calmly as she could manage. 'And I can't do it by myself. I need you to go and get Ruby and Granny and anyone else who's still in the house, and I need you to bring them back here. Can you do that for me?'

Henry scrubbed a bloody hand across his cheeks, nodding. 'Yes.'

'And I need you to run, Henry,' Regina said, her voice suddenly firm. 'I mean it – run the whole way there, and if you see anyone, I want you to scream. Scream as loudly as you can, and I'll come find you. Okay?'

'Okay,' he said, forcing himself up onto his knees. For a moment he just looked down at the woman laying beneath him, his eyebrows knitted tightly together. And then he pushed himself to his feet, took a painfully deep breath, and ran.

Tears leaked out from beneath Regina's eyelids the moment that he had turned his back. She let her head fall forwards, the steady flow dripping down her cheeks and off of her chin, blurring the puddle of red that lay below her.

Eventually she forced herself to look back into Emma Swan's pale face: the creases in her forehead were still visible, even then, and a single blonde curl had slipped forwards across her temple. Regina swallowed, then gently pushed it back. Her thumb ran absently down from the side of her face to the hard line of her jaw, then up to her slightly parted lips. When Daniel had died, she had looked down at his calm face and had for a moment hoped that maybe he was only asleep. But one look at Emma tore this vain optimism right from her: Emma didn't sleep this soundly. In her sleep Emma would scrunch up her face, curling her limbs against her chest, and breath heavily into the crook of her elbow. Sometimes she would start to mumble to herself – that first night in their tent, Regina had listened to her talking. The woman who lay in her arms now looked so unlike that frantic ball of energy that she knew that it almost lessened the pain that was clawing at her stomach – this wasn't really Emma at all. Her Emma was somewhere else, laughing loudly and planting snowdrops; falling off of horses with her blonde hair streaming out behind her.

'Emma,' Regina croaked out, gently grazing her thumb down the side of her face, knowing that this was her last moment alone with her – Henry would be arriving back at the cottage any second now, and so within a few minutes she would be surrounded once more. She sighed, brushing more of Emma's hair back from her face like she was a child. 'You… you can't hear me.'

She rolled her eyes to herself, almost laughing. 'Though, maybe you can. You always did like to do things differently to everyone else – I can't imagine you'd even be able to do dying normally.'

She took a deep breath, leaning closer to Emma's pale cheek so that she only needed to whisper.

'The problem is… I'm not sure I can let you go.' She swallowed, her eyes flicking across each and every dent and curve that lay before her. 'Not now. Not ever. I can't just go back to being the same angry woman that I was before. You've done something to me. You've… you've torn all of my armour away. And I'm not sure I have the strength to put it back on again.

'You know that you saved me, Emma. You saved me today when you took the arrow for me and you saved me at the stables when you let me know that there was someone out there who actually cared about me. When you took the horses so that I wouldn't have to… I ran because you made me feel wanted. And you made me feel like I wanted you. That was terrifying, Emma – it still is. Because I _still_ want you. I want you to open your eyes and laugh up at me for crying and to be rude to me and to demand some food because you haven't eaten in at least an hour. I want you to come back home with me and stand by my side as we show the town that, actually, good _does _always defeat evil – because you defeated me. Any time I closed myself up you tore me right back open again and I'll never, ever stop thanking you for that. No matter how much it hurts and it bleeds, I'll never be able to thank you enough for ripping me apart.'

Regina paused, swallowing down tears as she took a slow, lingering look at the trees surrounding them. They had gone still again. Everything about the forest had gone quiet.

'Emma,' she sighed, letting her tears drip down onto the mess of blonde hair beneath her. 'It shouldn't have been you who died. But you did – you died for Henry, and you died for me. That will never stop mattering. No one will ever forget what you did for us.

'And even when they take you away from me, I'll remember that first day down by the river when you told me that I was worth something for the first time in my life, and then you kissed me without knowing whether I would kiss you back. I'll remember when you put on a dress because you thought it would make me happy. I'll remember the night when we drank wine until the stars got lost and the nights when you held me as I slept and the nights when I woke up all of a sudden because I wasn't used to my bed not being so lonely anymore. Because you were right, as you infuriatingly always seem to be – everything that happened here has meant something to me. It's meant everything to me. You taught this blackened heart how to let in light again. And, Emma – _Emma_. I... I think I love you for it.'

Regina could hear the distant sound of approaching footsteps as she leant forwards, her mouth trembling, and kissed Emma Swan's blue-tinged lips one last time. Her blood-stained fingers clung onto the sides of a face that would never smile at her again.

And then the light. The coloured pulse of light.

As the dark shadow of the arrow's curse burst free from Emma's chest, Regina's eyes snapped back open. She looked down at the woman who lay in her arms, her body still and bruised and lifeless. The light swarmed through the surrounding trees, rocketing outwards until the leaves vibrated, but Regina still didn't look up. Tightening her grip on Emma's jaw, she watched with desperate eyes as a tiny flush of colour began to seep back into her cheeks.

'Emma?' she stammered, shaking her shoulders as urgently as she dared. '_Emma_?'

She saw nothing. The blonde's body remained limp and utterly still, flung like a ragdoll against Regina's trembling arms. The former queen's eyes darted back and forth across her face, not letting herself blink, not letting herself breathe. She waited and pleaded and forced back sharp tears that were threatening to tear her skin apart.

And then the pair of slightly grey lips parted, a fierce gasp bursting from between them.

Regina choked as the green eyes snapped back open, Emma's chest heaving as she frantically tried to force air back into her dried lungs. She felt two hands on her arms, nails piercing against her pale flesh. She looked up at the woman whose arms had held her as she died and whose lips had brought her back again. The sad smile returned.

'Regina?'

Tears slipping down her cheeks, Regina laughed. She laughed and then she sobbed, leaning forwards to bury her face in the nest of blonde curls that it had always belonged in.

'_Emma_. Emma, Emma, Emma.'

She let herself breathe in the smell of vanilla, one that only moments before had been lost to her.

As Henry burst back through the trees, shortly followed by nine figures with agonised, pale faces, he found himself skidding to a halt. He watched as Emma pushed Regina away from her so that she could stare up into her broken face once more, curling her fingers through her thick, dark hair and letting a teary grin settle across her face.

'Regina,' she stammered, her eyebrows curving upwards. 'You saved me. Didn't you?'

Regina laughed once more, shaking her head. She leaned forwards to press a fierce kiss onto her dry lips.

'Not exactly,' she mumbled against her skin, her eyes closed. 'I'm fairly certain that you saved me.'

**THE END**

* * *

_Hopefully this didn't destroy too many souls. Mega-angst - I can only apologise really. Hopefully it turned out okay! Please do leave a review to let me know what you thought._

_Thank you so much for reading guys, seriously - it's meant everything to me. I'm going to focus on my university work for the next few weeks but my next fic will be out as soon as I get the time to write it. If anyone has any requests or ideas or comments based on this work, then just shout. All my love! xxx_


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